Watermarble in July

A couple of weeks I ago I had the urge to actually take the time and watermarble my nails which doesn't happen often since I'd rather sit and do two coats of one color, throw on some top coat, and viola! DONE. Choosing colors is always a difficult task no matter but this time I went with Pure Ice "Silver Mercedes" and Zoya "Neve." The one thing that was different this time though? I used Simply Peel Latex Barrier from Bliss Kiss to try and minimize the amount of clean up I would have to do after I was done because we all know how much of a horror scene the aftermath can be! At the end of this post I'll have a little review of that going on to let you guys know my thoughts and feelings about it.

I usually don't take photos of anything until after I'm done but this time I tried to get my set up and after I took off the latex barrier but I like my camera a little too much and don't wanna risk getting it nail polished. My set up for this water marbling event consisted of grocery ads from the paper, two bathroom Dixie cups, a water bottle that is room temperature, toothpicks, tweezers, my nail polish remover, my brush (which I now realized isn't in the photo..oops!), my base and top coats, the Simply Peel, and last but not least (and of course) my two nail polishes.

I'm usually throwing tape on all my fingers and working like a robot but this time I decided that since I was using this new Simply Peel that I would do one hand at a time. So I put on my base coat first, the latex barrier on the skin around my nails after that, and then filled my one Dixie cup with some room temperature water. Now I'm not a master at creating designs or anything like that (no sarcasm I swear! I'm working on my skills) so I tried to keep to doing basic designs so I didn't waste too much time, nail polish, or the small amount of patience I sometimes have for water marbling. I do have to say though that this time around I wasn't failing so hard that I was doing pretty well. Halfway through my left hand, however, it was clear that I wasn't fully awake and needed more coffee considering the fact that instead of dipping my naked pointer finger nail into the design I created, I stuck in my middle finger..which was ALREADY DONE. I actually think I did this at least twice or so which is embarrassing but now you all know and I can't take it back. YOLO. After finishing my left hand I proceeded, with caution, to take the tweezers and peel off the latex barrier from my nails. I realized that on my right hand I might want to do a huge layer on the pads of my fingers because there's nail polish getting there as well. Here's a quick shot I took after I took the latex off and now I wish I had a before photo..my bad:

After taking the Simply Peel latex barrier off

 After the left hand I of course did my right hand and I literally cannot remember to save my life whether or not I put a base coat on before. But either way what had to be done had gotten completed! Although I do have to say that I wasn't exactly all that crazy about my right hand but hey it happens right? So now I shall get out with the plethora of photos that I obviously took *enter charming, quirky looking smile here*

The left hand:

And now onto thee right hand:

On a quick side note of a thought that just came to my mind while plastering these photos on here..do you know how DIFFICULT it is to attempt to take a photograph of your right hand?! I literally had to sit down at the table we have on our back deck in order to capture my right hand because I definitely don't trust my left hand, standing up, with an expensive camera trying to take a picture. 

 Now onto my Simply Peel short review:

So I've been seeing a bunch of posts on Instagram about people using a liquid latex type of barrier on their skin while they're doing their nails resulting with a whole lot less to clean up afterwards. So naturally, after forgetting to for I don't know how long, I went onto Amazon and looked up liquid latex nail polish and decided that the Simply Peel from Bliss Kiss was good so I bought a bottle. It came in the mail, I got excited, opened the bottle....and the smell is gross, it's what I like to call "it smells like fish paste" and I've literally had that smell saying since elementary school (art class, don't ask). I used it once when I was just regularly painting my nails and I wasn't so sure I did it correctly so I decided that before I'd judge it, I'd try it a couple more times, and so I did. The biggest test was during this water marble and I have to say, I just wasn't impressed too much. Also DO NOT wear good yoga pants while using this either! I kid you not, I accidentally got some splattered onto my good yoga pants and I went to put them on the other day, after they had been washed, and it was SUCH a pain to try and get it on. Yeah yeah yeah I know, liquid latex, clothing, I am NOT that well educated when it comes to things like that. But either way, after putting it on during my water marbling, I accidentally touched two fingers together and they basically stuck to each other....uh no thank you! Also after I peeled it off from my hot mess of an after math, I basically felt like all it did was peel off from underneath the nail polish that was on top of it and then left the nail polish on my finger. It completely defeated the entire purpose of using it, why would I spend extra time to put this on if it's not really going to even take the excess nail polish with it when I peel the latex off? So my overall thoughts and decisions about this one is a NO and I'd rather try a different brand from someone else.  

Fourth of July Nails

This year I wasn't too motivated to be very fancy with my Fourth of July nails, it's been a funky past month or so. This time I decided to do a simple gradient on my accent nails with red, white, and blue, and just did plain blue on the rest of my nails. For the blue I used Pure Ice "French Kiss" which I'm pretty sure there two different colors with the same name..and yes I own them both! That's how I found out :). For the red I also used a Pure Ice nail polish (since they're cheap and pretty good) "Siren" and for the white used Studio M "French Tip" (I swear I'm not trying to theme this).

For the gradient I used a makeup sponge in which I painted the colors onto one by one. I would totally make a video of how I did this but I honestly have no idea how to for one and..okay well there's only one point! I get a lot of amazed looks when I explain how I do this to people and it's pretty funny, makes me look like a genius! My explanation might not help either but the way that I do this after I paint the nail polish onto the sponge is I dab it onto the nail in a back and forth motion while also doing an up and and down motion at the same time. I always do two layers of this as well, sometimes more depending on the nail polish, and like always, a second coat makes such a difference.

I wish I was more motivated this year to go all out but maybe I'll have more energy next year....let's hope so! The blue went on pretty well and if I wasn't so adamant about doing two coats every time, it could be just a one coat nail polish which is great. The red is the same way and I feel like that's how a good chunk of Pure Ice nail polishes are like that. White has always been one of those nail polishes that no matter what brand it is I'm always looking at my nails thinking to myself "Hm I don't think I have enough on my nails, doesn't look like EVERYTHING is covered." But anyways, that's pretty much it for this post and hopefully I won't slack too much in the near future. My life is about to get a little thrown upside down so I apologize in advance!

This Color's Making Waves by OPI

I BLOGGED I KNOW! The last few weeks seem to have been..very unproductive which isn't good. I'll just go ahead and blame the weather since it seems like it's mostly been raining and storming with a few nice, warm, sunny days here and there. And we all know how much rainy crap weather doesn't do anything good for our moods and sleep is basically the only thing one desperately wants. Secondly I did turn 25 (speed limit, yeahhhh!) so I'll maybe assume it's a mid-twenties-crisis? Anyways onto the blog post for this week, which is the 4th of July tomorrow! I'm kind of scared that it's already July since August means I'll most likely have my sanity sucked away.

For this post I want to be honest and to say that I have NO idea if or what this nail polish is part of..a collection? Random? WHO KNOWS! I picked it up at Ulta when I went to search desperately for my favorite dry shampoo, Batiste, and I planned on not buying a single bottle of nail polish going in..we see how well that worked right? I can't help but to browse through the clearance to see if there's any good nail polish on sale then found myself wandering over to the little tower of nail polish. I couldn't leave the store without buying at least one bottle and OPI's This Color's Making Waves was the chosen one basically for the color. If I had to describe this color I'd say it's similar to a sea foam green type of color. I noticed as well that if I tilted my hand forward that at the angle it seemed to shift a little to a blue which I find awesomely cool.

See? Maybe?

Putting the nail polish on was smooth, of course I put on two coats, and that always seems to help. There are also little sparkles in there too which I always forget are sort of a pain and a mess when I'm cleaning up my nails. However that could also contribute to the way my brush cleans up but I guess it's a mystery we may never solve. Overall I really like this nail polish as well as shifting it around in the bottle because well, I'm easily amused, what can I say?

Santa Monica Shore Thing by NCLA

Believe it or not I actually didn't have to go rummaging through my nail polish stash in order to find this polish! It was nicely in place at the front of the top drawing just staring at me begging for me to use it. So I did and I'm glad because I haven't used it in a while. I got "Santa Monica Shore Thing" by NCLA a couple of years ago along with a few other nail polishes. Since it's been a couple of years since I've gotten a bottle from NCLA, I'm not sure what has improved but my only problem/complaint with this one was that the brush wasn't my favorite. When I would brush on the nail polish it didn't go on that smoothly and put lines into what I just brushed on. During my second round of coating I tried to put more nail polish on the brush than I normally would so that it was a little thicker and wouldn't put lines into the polish. Overall that seemed to helped and after putting my top coat on they look pretty damn good!