You guys, it's already the second week of September! How the heck are we almost halfway through the month already? It's my third week back to work and I feel as if my summer vacation just started. I suppose that's because I was off and running for almost 3 months straight with lots of little trips and visiting with friends. My life is just as busy now as it was then but I'm still finding time to blog which makes me very happy. Typically by this time of year I'm a bit burnt out and end up pushing blogging to the very bottom of my to-do list. Not this time, this time I have a nail art look to share with you that I am very proud of!
I have been trying for months to do a marbled nail look that actually resembles stone marble. I thought I was on the right track with my Neutral Marbled nails manicure but once that was completed I realized it was too uniform looking and really wasn't what I wanted. I've come close to the effect I wanted with my Holiday Fluid Nail Art but it still wasn't quite right. Then I remembered the glitter topper nails I did a few years ago for a challenge and decided to try a spin on the technique I used for that manicure and it worked!
What do you think? I am so happy that I didn't give up because I am still floored by how this turned out. And it was so simple to do in the end, but quite messy if I'm being honest.
I started out with one coat of Sally Hansen Whited from the Crayola collab in the Insti-dri line. To protect my skin and help with clean up I used UN-Frog-gettable cuticle cover. I then painted a very thick layer of the Sally Hansen White onto my nail art mat and placed random drops of polish onto the wet surface. The polishes I used were all from China Glaze in the colors Elephant Walk, Cosmic Dust, Kiss My Glass and Stone Cold.
Using my squishy stamper from Creative Shop I placed it on the polish and gave a slight twist. This swirled the colors giving the marbled effect which I was able to stamp directly onto my nails. I've found that a squishy stamper works best for this because it allows you to really press down firmly on your nail without distorting the design. You will also want to press the stamper straight down onto your nail, and pick it straight up, there will be a lot of polish on the stamper and will most likely slip and slide if you try rolling it.
If there are any portions of your nail that seem to have too much solid color you can do the process again and use the edge of the stamper head to fill in that area rather than stamping the entire nail again. I ended up doing this to a few nails and it worked out really well.
I've been watching a ton of nail art videos on youtube lately, mostly from Naio Nails and she always does these extreme nails which inspired me to add some nail art on top of the marble. Now I do floral manicures all the time because they are my favorite but they are usually stamped and I haven't done any hand painted roses since 2013 and figured it was time to give it another go.
I tried to strategically place the roses over parts of the marble that were my least favorites which put them on the sides of my nails. Not the best placement I know because it seems sort of unbalanced to me but overall I really really love how this turned out.
I used acrylic paint in red, green and white to paint my roses. The pink and light green you see was created by adding a small amount of white to the red and green. The veining I did with a gold glitter striper from Jordana I picked up on clearance several years ago.
I have mixed feelings about the glitter. I think it was needed for the marble effect but maybe not quite so much. What do you think?
That's all I have for you today. Be sure to stop back on Thursday when I'll be unveiling a Minnesota Nice collab that is releasing this Saturday at Polishcon Minneapolis from 4 Minnesota makers. Also, I will be attending Polishcon again and hope to meet a few of you there. Until then, thanks for stopping by and Happy Polishing!
