My Third Water Marble Mani

As promised, I'm posting a pic of my current mani, a purple water marble. This is only my third attempt at water marbling. It didn't turn out as I first planned. Last week I was wearing Revlon Blue Lagoon, and I loved it so much that I wanted to do a water marble with it, white and silver. But unfortunately, either the Revlon or Wet n Wild white I was using, or maybe both, would not play well in the water. I forgot that I had the same results on my first attempt at water marbling. I tried a couple of Revlon polishes and none of them worked. I thought maybe since this bottle was brand new that it might work, but no such luck. I'm curious, have any of you had any luck at all using Revlon polishes in a water marble? Or are they just not formulated to work properly?


Well, since my new favorite light blue polish wouldn't work, I ended up doing a purple water marble. But this time I wanted to go lighter. And I had already applied a base coat of WnW French White Creme on my nails in preparation of the blue/white/silver marble I had planned. But since I wasn't sure if my white polish was having issues in the water as well, I decided not to use it in the water. Which is why, if you look closely, you can see a little bit of white around the edges on some of my nails. That does bother me. I would rather my base coat match the colors in the water marble. I will definitely work on getting better at that in the future. But for now, here's my current mani:

Sally Hansen CSM Plum Luck & Pedal to the Metal, HAN Xtreme Wear Lacey Lilac & Celeb City with a base coat of WnW French White Creme

So far I've found that Sally Hansen and some Wet n Wild polishes work best for me in water marbles. I've seen on other blogs that China Glaze seems to work pretty well. I look forward to getting more CG polishes and trying them in the water myself. What brands do you guys like the best for water marbling? Let me know in the comments, I'd love to hear from you!


Thanks for reading!
Crystal

My First Julep Maven Swatches

I finally got a chance this weekend to swatch all 4 of the first Julep Maven nail colors I received this month. See my previous post for an explanation of why 4 instead of just 2. Here they are:

Miranda, Olivia, Zoe, Samantha

I absolutely love Miranda. It is close to Sinful's Mint Apple, but without the shimmer. I do like Olivia, a nice warm brown cream. I think it will be great to wear in the fall, when the temperature finally drops below 90 here! Zoe and Samantha were not my Boho Glam picks for this month, but were sent to me by mistake. I like Zoe okay, it looks more like a shiny copper penny on the nail than I thought it did in the bottle. But Samantha is still definitely not me. Sorry it looks more orange in this pic than the hot hot pink that it really is. I might be able to use it in some nail art, or maybe on my toes...maybe. But all in all, I love my Boho Glam picks from my introductory Sneak Peak Box. Now I can't wait to get my next box in the mail!

I'll try to post again soon with pics of my current mani - a new water marble!

Thanks for reading!

Crystal

My Julep Maven Experience

Okay, I know that just about everyone on here has heard about Julep’s new Julep Maven program by now. If you haven’t, please click here to check it out, because it really is a great deal. For only $19.99 a month, you will receive a box full of nail polish and goodies worth over $40 (usually way more!). You can skip a month, gift it to a friend, or cancel your membership at anytime, or request another shelf pull if you’re not happy with the current month’s selection.

It sounded like a great idea to me when I first read about it on Once Bitten. Especially when she shared a coupon code she had found online for $15 off! (You can only use it once, so I’m not sure if it’s still valid or not, but if you want to give it a try it is smh9oxu.) That made my first Sneak Peak Box only $5! And it was packed with $74 worth of goodies! Did I mention free shipping, plus 20% off all julep.com purchases, and a $15 credit for every referral?! That was definitely worth $5 to me, and I could always cancel if I didn’t like it for some reason.

So I quickly joined last Monday, took the style quiz and it turns out I am so Boho Glam! : ) It took a week, but I finally received my first Sneak Peak Box this Monday. I was so excited I opened it up as soon as I got it in the house! But instead of receiving the Miranda (creamy seafoam green) and Olivia (warm creamy brown) nail colors that I was so looking forward to, I got Zoe (metallic bronze/copper) and Samantha (the most obnoxious hot pink I’ve ever seen, definitely NOT Boho Glam or me!). What was even weirder is that there was a card inside my box that listed and pictured everything that was supposed to be included in my Boho Glam box. So it’s not exactly like they sent me an entirely wrong box by accident, but more like they packed the wrong two nail colors in my box by mistake. Here's a pic of everything in my box, Facial For Hands Glycolic Hand Scrub, Zoe nail color, Basecoat, Samantha nail color, and samples of the Hand Scrub & Hand Lotion.

So I immediately emailed Julep’s customer service to make them aware of the error, and to see if there was any way they could send me the two nail colors I was supposed to receive. The next day I received a prompt reply apologizing for the mistake, telling me that I could keep/share the two original nail colors I received (which was a relief, because even though I would gladly return them, I’d rather avoid the hassle), and that they were shipping out the correct colors to me that very day. Two days later, I received a small box from Julep which contained my correct nail colors, Miranda and Olivia, and two more samples of the Hand Scrub & Hand Lotion. Now that’s great customer service!

I will definitely stay with the Julep Maven program as long as their customer service remains top-notch, and their Sneak Peak Boxes continue to include products I’m interested in. I haven’t actually tried any of the nail colors yet, but I look forward swatching them this weekend, and, of course, I’ll be sure to share pics!

Thanks for reading!

Crystal

Welcome!

Welcome to my very first blog! I’ve only been aware of nail art blogs for a little less than a month now, but I’m already so addicted to looking at all of your wonderful posts that I decided to start my own.

First of all, thanks to Hey, Nice Nails! for unwittingly introducing me to this world. I first saw a picture of their Jill Sander sweater-inspired striped nails on AOL, which led me to check out their blog on tumblr. That’s where I caught my first glimpse of water marble nail art and thought, “I have to try that!” They had a picture tutorial, and in their comments they included a link to My Simple Little Pleasures’ YouTube channel and Colette’s amazing video tutorials. I watched several of her videos that Sunday night and, after much trial and error with my (then) small nail polish stash, I did my very first water marble mani! Of course I had my fair share of mistakes, but overall it turned out way better than I imagined. Sorry the picture’s a little blurry, I took this one with my cell phone and it looked clear on the smaller screen.

Sally Hansen CSM Plum Luck & Iced Coffee

Initially I just became addicted to My Simple Little Pleasures, I couldn’t stop going back and looking through all of her archived posts. I swear I hardly got anything done that first week! I was just admiring her art and techniques and making notes on what products I needed to buy for myself to get my nails looking as good as hers! Then I started checking out some of her favorite blogs, and some of their favorite blogs, and now it’s an addiction that just keeps growing! There’s so much terrific nail art out there that I never even dreamed about a month ago! So many techniques and products that I can’t wait to try! I plan to chronicle my journey here.

And because that picture of my first water marble is pretty God-awful, I just have to share a picture of my second water marble! I did this one just 5 days after my first try, and it’s 1,000 times better! It also helps that I took this picture with my camera.

Sally Hansen CSM Gray by Gray, Pedal to the Metal, HAN Xtreme Wear Gunmetal, Wet Cement, and WnW Gray's Anatomy

So, thank you to everyone who inspired me to start playing around with my own nail art, and now posting my own blog. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Thanks for reading!

Crystal