Shattered Glow

I did have a different idea for a nail design, but I was so tempted to try OPI's "Turquoise Shatter" over black that I just had to do it. Unfortunately I had to take the previous manicure off before I managed to take a picture of me holding my favourite drum sticks. They are a holographic purple and looked amazing with my nails, but I didn't have my camera on me. I suppose it's better that I am doing this manicure, because although it's a polish repeat, it can be a filler for time before next week. I came up with a Birthday design for myself, but if I create it now, by the time my Birthday rolls around it will be old and not-so-great looking.

The "Turquoise Shatter" (I keep wanting to call it crackle. I suppose it's the same thing but names are important) really seems to glow when it's against the black. I took so many pictures of this manicure trying to capture the green/aqua colour that my eyes saw, but the camera didn't seem to want to pick up. I'm very much in love with this shatter and will probably use it a LOT!I also found that when using Sally Hansen's "Black Out", I only needed one, maybe two coats to make it rich and opaque. When I was using China Glaze's "Liquid Leather", it was lovely and smooth, but I found I needed a lot of coats before I could wear it out, and I felt that I was wasting polish (which is probably why I've run out now).

So in less than a week I'll have an actual 'free-hand nail art' post up, and hopefully I can get onto my facebook page; it was glitching horribly last week. I hope you love this polish as much as I do! Thanks for reading ^.^

Keep it Crackled

During band practice, a friend of mine (and lead singer) had this amazing colour on her nails. I asked her about it and she said it was OPI's "Turquoise Shatter". For the rest of the practice I couldn't keep my eyes off her nails. Once the evening was over, I asked her how much it cost, thinking that I must go pick that colour up for myself sometime. A few days later, she had kindly bought the polish for me, and I have so much thanks for her! I tried it out on my own nails, and I don't want to remove it because I adore the colour!

So this is OPI's "Turquoise Shatter" over top of Nicole by OPI's "Keep It Real". I keep wanting to look at my nails all day. This has to be one of my favourite manicures. When my hands are far away from me, the blue and pink make my nails look purple, which is my favourite colour ^.^ I think I mentioned before that if you don't have a colour underneath a shatter polish, it's works like a regular varnish. I don't think you can wear a base coat the prevent it from crackling, and I recommend you always wer a base coat, so to protect your nails, go and buy the same colour in a regular varnish instead. I'm all about making your nails look good with my free-hand nail nart, but looking good also means having healthy nails. I care about the health of your nails as much as the polish you put on them. So I'd recommend buying this beautiful colour! I think it's amazing!

Bumble Bee Water Marble

After many months of ignoring my (messy) water marbling cup, I decided to dust it off and try again. It turns out that lack of practice really shows. This was more of an experiment for myself and I happened to have my camera with me, so this isn't my best work, but I still like it.

I started out with an equal amount of black and yellow polish, and my design looked more like a wasp than a bee, so I painted my tips yellow and doubled the yellow drops that I placed in the water. That worked a lot better. When water marbling, it's always good to experiment before you start your design. I also learned that because I'm right handed, I should position my camera on my left side so my hand doesn't obscure the view. The more you know, 'cause knowledge it power! You should also use a cup of room temperature filtered water, but I used tap water. It still worked, but not as well as it could have. Filtered water works best. I'm also quite glad that this video wasn't for a contest because I really don't like speaking in my videos. I become shy and sound a lot younger than I really am, but hopefully I'll get over that one day. You can really see the waspishness of the picture below. I was tempted to draw antenas or wings, but I decided against that, but don't let me stop you! I also hit the bad luck that right after this design was complete, I caught my nails on the tape I was using and they smudged >.<

Place a french-tip guard just below your smile-line (the base of your tip) and cover the rest of your nail and around your finger with scotch tape leaving your tip exposed. The tape helps with your clean up later. Using a black and yellow polish (or any 2 or 3 colours if you don't want bee nails), carefully place drops in the water. For every black drop, add two yellow ones. Watch as it spreads in the water and creates a bulls-eye or target effect. Try to work very quickly to prevent the polish from drying before you're finished, and avoid using fast-drying polishes. I used Sally Hansen's Xtreme Wear "Black Out" and "Mellow Yellow". Once you feel you have enough polish in the water, take a tooth pick or a stick with pointy end and lightly manipulate the polish as though you were drawing. Try to create more lines than curves. Once you light your design, find an area that you'd like transfered onto your nail and carefully aim your tip at the water and dunk it in. To save on both time and polish, you can dip two or more nails in at once, but make sure they all hit the water at the same time! Once your nail is in the water, take your stick and clean the polish out of the water. Once it's clear, slowly take your finger out. Try to do this very slowly as to prevent air bubbles. Wait for your nail to dry, then remove the tape by cutting it away, then add a top coat. Water Marbling takes a LOT of practice!

Good luck!

Party Scribbles

I really liked the scribble effect that I did on my Mum's nails that I decided to try it on myself, but less scribble-like and more splatter-like. I tried to make it match what I was wearing, which was a black shirt with a mess of colours all over it and silver details. I was going out to a party with nothing on my nails and had this urge to paint them, so with about 5 minutes to spare, I sat down and did my nails. I like the messy look that came out of this. Obviously not for every design, but my shirt was very random and I had the nails to match.

I used up the last of my China Glaze "Liquid Leather" by painting my tips, making the smile-line as feathery as I could (like a gradient, but cheating). I might be able to scrape some out of the bottom of the bottle, but I bought another black last week to replace it (Sally Hansen's Xtreme Wear "Black Out"). With my MigiNailArt neon colours, I used the pen to scribble around on my nail. if you try this out, be careful to press lightly or you'll smudge the black underneath. Once All the neon colours were on, I took NailJazz "Silver" and scribbled that on top. I tried to make it the more prominent colour. I finished off with a top coat and ran out to the party.

Painting my right hand with my left is never easy, but I've been painting my nails for years and the practice is definitely working, but because my left is my weaker hand, applying this design to my right gave me ridiculous hand cramp! Trying to squeeze the bottle with my left hand while trying to produce tiny details... I think most of the scribbles on that hand were caused by my shaking. It still looks cool though. I wouldn't try, for example, the Mario scene design on my right hand in case I gave myself an injury. For this design, it works well though.

Also.... I've added a few things to the right hand side of this blog -> If you want to find a particular design that I have posted, you can now search much faster through my blog. You can also subscribe to posts and comments, and follow me by e-mail even if you don't have a gmail account. There is also a link to my google spreadsheet where I have recorded all of my nail polish colours and clear coats and their properties. I have also added a facebook 'Like' button. If you go to facebook.com/scribblingwithpolish I will be posting small statuses about my nail-related thoughts, as well as notifying when I write a new post. I'll also have some pictures posted on facebook as well, and you can feel free to ask me any questions on my wall or let me know how you're doing with your designs and nail care. If I'm brave enough, I might also take a few requests, so be sure to check that out by clicking the 'Like' button!

Scribbling (with polish)

I couldn't have used any other title for this one ^.^ So a few days after I did my Mum's nails for Cirque du Soleil, she came to me 5 minutes before going out to a party wanting her nails done. I didn't have time to take her Cirque polish off so I just applied this design on top. I used my Sally Hansen pen for the blue, and with 5 minutes to paint, it's not my neatest design, but people still loved it. She was wearing a blue dress with a white design so I tried to make her nails match.

This was taken before clean-up. I think it's pretty cool! I painted her nails blue with Sally Hansen's Nail art pen, then once that dried I took MigiNailArt's "White" from the metallic collection and drew scribbles all over the nail. I finished off with a top coat.

I tried to get a bit of the dress in this picture. Also, I finally bought nail glue and placed a small amount of the rip in my thumb nail and it's holding on strong! I hope you like this design, because this isn't the only scribble design I'll be posting this week!

Cirque du Soleil

There have been so many attempts to post this design, and I'm so sorry I couldn't do it yesterday, or earlier today, but I kept receiving an error message or my internet would die as I was saving/posting. On Wednesday night, my parents went to see Cirque du Soleil and my Mum wanted her nails doe for the event. She was wearing a black, silver, and red dress, so I tried to come up with a design that fit both her clothing and the theme of the night. She came to me 15 minutes before leaving so I was slightly rushed and didn't get to add all the elements of my original design onto her nails, but she still loved it. I didn't have time to take pictures before she left, but I managed to snap some once she came back, despite her having broken a few nails (how? She was a spectator!).

I added gold to this design to represent the Soleil theme (French for sun), and the silver and red for her dress. To create this design, I painted her nails with Nicole by OPI's "Keep It Real" after a base coat, then once that dried I painted half of her nail with a diagonal "Silver Texture" by OPI stroke, and the other half with OPI's "Gold Texture". I painted these diagonally because depending on which direction you paint the crackle polish on determines the direction that it cracks. Finally, I sealed it with a top coat and let her rush off.

Before applying this design onto my Mum's nails, I planned it out on a sample nail, but on this nail I added black swirls on top of the crackle using MigiNailArt's "Black". It's called Black, and it is, but it has subtle blue glitter in the colour and I thought the more glitter the better for Cirque. It's up to you which you prefer.

You might be wondering what the design to the left of the Cirque nail is on my nail wheel... well I'll show you, as well as a few others from that particular wheel (I have others that I'll show you one day). The Nightmare Before Christmas! Tehe! Also a couple of music/piano tips, and the new logo from my favourite TV show, Doctor Who! I hope you life them! I still need to do my own nails sometime soon so be prepared for another blog post before next Friday.

Pitch Midnight

I am so excited to tell you guys.... For the longest time, all the pictures that I took on my little pink Sony camera were stuck because I lost the USB cable a year or two ago. The better quality pictures on this blog were either taken with my Dad's little digital camera, or his epically expensive professional one. I don't want to delete any of his pictures and I do have to sneak the cameras at times, so I don't always get the opportunity to take several pictures until I see a good quality one, BUT THAT WILL ALL CHANGE! My Birthday is next month and I received money from my Grandparents early and for a while I have wanted a video camera, so I wandered into Black's at the mall and had a great (and slightly flirty) conversation with a very helpful man there and ended up finding a Sony HandyCam and falling in techy-love. I bought the camera, a memory card, and a card reader for said card. The cool part is that car-reader is compatible with my digital camera's memory card, so my photos are free at last! I really don't have an excuse for rubbish webcam photos anymore. The moral of this paragraph is most or all of my pictures will be GOOD quality, and I will be able to film more and better nail art tutorials (the three that I have filmed so far have all been on my webcam using PhotoBooth on my MacBook). This doesn't mean that I can post more on youtube, because my internet still sucks, but I'll try for you guys, even if it does cost a lot. That's how much I love you all!

If you're still awake, I'll get onto the latest design. Despite using my digital camera for these photos, they do look better in person. And a lot darker. I'm hoping to try out "the straw technique" soon, where you blow polish out of a tiny straw to get a speckled or star appearance, but I don't own any straws (yet), so I had to apply the stars by hand. The design did look better before I applied the stars, but also in need of... something. To start, I applied China Glaze's "Liquid Leather" as a gradient on my tips. Because it's not a completely opaque black when you apply thin coats, I did hand paint the free edges to make them extra dark. Once that dried, I sponged on Sally Hansen's Inta-Dry "Co-Bolt Blue" on top of the black, and finally NailJazz* "Royal Blue" as a gradient on top of the black and blue. Once everything dried, I took NailJazz "White" and with the pen tip, I tapped the white tops over the top for stars. To give the sky a little texture, I used the same white and very lightly sponged it over the tips randomly to simulate dark clouds. To be honest, I prefer the cloud look in these pictures, and not so much on my nails themselves. I covered my design with a top coat and cleaned my cuticles. Because I used black and other dark colours, I had to make sure I used a good base coat to protect my nails before starting this design.

Before I had the idea to turn this into a night sky look, I had just the plain black gradient tips on my nails for all of five minutes, and I really liked the black tips, but I can't just keep posting different coloured gradients on this blog or you might get bored. Oh, also, I still have both of my thumb nails in case you didn't notice. I'm still applying the liquid bandage and other products to keep the rip secure. I did have the idea to apply a tiny gel overlay on the rip instead, but the liquid bandage seems to be doing to job nicely, even if it does make my thumbnail smell a little funky.

*I organized all the folders on my laptop and made a dedicated nail art one, and I have 251 photos of my nails just for this blog (obviously I haven't posted them all)! I discovered while naming the pictures that 16 of my MigiNailArt polishes are NOT actually MigiNailArt, even though they look identical, and so did the packets they came in. I was wondering why I seemed to own more polishes than they advertised on their website. So all of the polishes from the neon and metallic collections are actually Nail Jazz. That's probably going to confuse people and myself. At least I know the names of all the Nail Jazz colours, and quite a few of my MigiNailArt ones now.