Green and white water marbling!

My first successful water marble! I'm mostly impressed, especially with the minimal amount of clean up I had to do. I took the picture before clean up to show how careful taping can make cleaning up easy.

First, I used two coats of China Glaze Snow, which is a white creme. Then for the actual marbling, I used China Glaze White Cap and China Glaze Glittering Garland.

I dipped the index and ring fingers together, after drawing a sort of four-leaf clover in the water. I also dipped the ring and pinky fingers together, after drawing a design that was more linear. I quite like the designs on the index finger and the ring finger. I also like how the designs on the ring and pinky fingers line up with each other!

I tried water marbling a few days after this, and ran into problems. The polish all migrated to one side after dropping it in, and it dried before I could draw in a design. I tried changing the water, and the same thing happened. I'll have to figure out what went wrong that time, because water marbling is pretty easy, and it looks great. I definitely want to do more marbling!

If you want to learn how to water marble, I recommend the YouTube channel by SimpleLittlePleasues. Her marbling is incredible, and I watched a bunch of her videos before trying it myself.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Shortly, anyway. This semester was so busy and weird, I've only painted my nails three times since the beginning of September. I have three exams left to write: one today, one tomorrow, and one on Thursday. After that, I have three weeks off. I intend to do a LOT of swatching to make up for the long hiatus.

Next semester, my schedule is much better. I crammed all my labs onto one day, so I will be able to paint my nails and swatch pretty regularly.

Good luck to anyone writing exams! Go fight win!

China Glaze Midtown Magic

This is a really, really gorgeous polish. Midtown Magic is from China Glaze's Fall 2011 collection, Metro. It's a very deep berry-red (maybe claret?) with orange and gold shimmer. In general, I don't get excited over fall collections and darker colors like this, but I think Midtown Magic is special.

I used three coats on every finger but the middle, where I did two coats to show the base color better where it's thinner. It applied nicely but I had expected this to be more opaque, and maybe only needing two coats in the first place. However, as I'm sure you know, doing more than two coats really doesn't bother me if the color is nice or unique enough.

Tomorrow, I will have for you swatches of the other polish I bought from the Metro collection. Next week, I am planning on doing water marbling for the first time, and I'll have pictures of that, no matter how it turns out. See you next time!

Wear-test with Misa Endless Keys

You guys, the wear on Misa's polishes is seriously amazing. This is after one week of wearing it, with no base or top coat.

As you can see, there is absolutely no chipping. There is a small bit of tipwear, however. This is, hands down, the best-wearing polish I've ever used.

There's not really much else to say. If you've never tried Misa polishes, I strongly recommend them.

China Glaze Senorita Bonita

Senorita Bonita is another polish from China Glaze's Summer 2011 collection, Island Escape. It's a gorgeous almost-frosty purple, with blue and red shimmer. I love it on my fingers, but I think it makes an even better pedicure color.

This was two coats. It went on great, with your standard China Glaze formula. It makes me think of what might be the end result if two other China Glaze polishes, Coconut Kiss and Flying Dragon, had a baby.

Tomorrow, I have for you the results of the wear test I've been doing with Misa Endless Keys. Spoiler alert: Misa seems to be superior to the other brands I've tried, in terms of wear. See you tomorrow!

China Glaze Blue Iguana

Blue Iguana is a bright blue glass-fleck from China Glaze's Summer 2011 collection, Island Escape. In some of the pictures, the bottle looks like it has some purple glass-flecks, but it doesn't show up very frequently on the nail. I saw it a few times from certain angles, but it's not obvious. It's a pretty color, and it reminds me more of those really nice-looking beaches that you see on TV, with the crystal clear, bright blue water, than an iguana. However, I really like iguanas, so I'm a fan of the name.

Blue Iguana was pretty sheer, and this was three coats. Another downside is that it stains pretty badly when you take it off. I always find that blues stain my hands though, so maybe it's just me.

If you're looking for a bright blue glass-fleck, don't mind doing three coats, and are perhaps a bit more careful with your removal technique than I am, I think you'll like Blue Iguana.

Misa Endless Keys

Sorry I haven't posted in a couple of weeks. I didn't anticipate being as busy as I was. I have a couple weeks of vacation now before I start the new semester, so I am going to work really hard at swatching a lot of things that I want to review, so that I have a bit of backlog to work through as I begin school. I will be able to have a couple days a week where I can create more of a backlog once the semester begins. Hopefully this will allow me to post as regularly as I want to!

As some of you may know, Canadian politician Jack Layton died today. As such, I wanted to do an orange manicure today as a small tribute to a great man. I chose Misa Endless Keys, a tangerine-orange loaded with gold glass flecks, from their Summer 2011 collection.

I've never bought or used a Misa polish before this one, and it blew me away. The formula was great; it wasn't thick at all, but I don't want to say it was runny, because it wasn't. I guess I would say it was "pleasantly thin," while not being totally sheer. For these pictures, I used three coats. One thing about Endless Keys is that I wanted it to be as orange as it is in the bottle, but it has more of a golden yellow tone once you put it on. I bet it would look great layered over an orange creme, and it would look more like the bottle.

I will definitely be buying more Misa polishes in the future. I got this one from TransDesign, which ships internationally, and paid $3.75 USD.