Polish All the Nails

I love glitter, blah, blah, I think you get the picture by now.  HOWEVER, you haven't seen me to do a checkered pattern with matte square glitter now have you? HUH??? Yeah, that's what I thought.  It's that kind of day.  Not even a sparkle or rainbow in sight, too!  Cos that's a good segue.

Yeah so when I finally figure out how to do something, be it glitter mosaics, water marbling, one day stamps, I have trouble thinking of anything else.  I'm so happy I've finally figured out water marbling I just can't stop doing it.  Thus, moar water marbling!  I'm so addicted to making patterns in the polish. Like my other water marbles, I started with two coats of Orly Dayglow, my current go-to white.  After taping all my fingers off, I created the water marble using Nicole by OPI Razzle Dazzle and more Dayglow.  In case you were wondering, I've found the best way to tape off your nails is to take a reasonable long piece of tape and line it up to one side of a nail then wrap it around so it hugs the tip of your finger and lines up to the other side.  Then add a piece of tape to bridge the gap against your cuticles.  It's always better to back off from your nail a bit too, as there's nothing worse than having a gap where the tape overhangs your nail.

Aww yeah, I'm going to lead off today with announcing that this mani is a success because my male co-worker noticed my nails and commented on them!  Considering I'm a programmer in an all-male office, this is quite the accomplishment.  Anyway, Reddit is currently running a 52-week challenge over at /r/redditlaqueristas and the theme this week is black and white.  Give I've been having more success with water marbling lately I wanted to try and reproduce this  pattern.  I actually think I got really close! I've been playing around with different combinations of water temperatures, cup sizes and polishes and I think I found the right combination as my polishes spread out absolutely perfectly last night.  After adding two coats of Orly Dayglow as a base colour, I dropped in Nicole by OPI Razzle Dazzler and more Dayglow into coldish water - not the warmer water I used the night before.  It seemed to make the difference as the polished behaved just like all the videos.

I have to do something about the amount of glitter on my desk.  I just cannot see anything else with the 30 or so sparkly pots just lying around.  Today's mani took a concerted effort to resist the glitter but I'm glad I did.  I've seen this design on  pshiiit.com  but I love the look of a dot gradient so much I had to do it myself.  So, non-sparkly, black and white design it is! First up, I added two coats of Wet n Wild Black Creme to four fingers and three coats of Joe Fresh White to my ring finger.  White is always tricky to work with, just make sure your coats are thin and even and three coats should get you good coverage.  Then, pouring out a little puddle of polish, I used a toothpick to dot each nail in the reverse colour.  Keep an eye on your puddle, if it dries too much, you'll get little strings of polishes coming off the toothpick, like you see on my thumb.  I love how this turned out, so eye-catching and bold.