Monday Mani: Decals using Water Marble Decals

Today's Monday Mani theme is decals. It's such a great theme because they are SOOOO many things you can do.

I decided to go with water marble decals which seem to be popular lately. The idea is that you do your regular water marble.

Instead of dunking your finger in, you let it dry for a long time (I did about an hour I think) and gently lift it out, letting it dry on paper towel.

Then you can cut the decal and apply it to a semi sticky base on your nail.

I see tons of advantages to this: less waste (I used one go for 4 nails), less mess, time saver (I marbled more nap time and finished my nails during nap), and more accurate (you can redo the marble over and over again without redoing your whole nail plus you can cut the exact part you want to use instead of hoping you're dunking right!).

Onto the mani!

I used China Glaze Kalahari Kiss as the base for my thumb, ring, and pinkie. I also used it along with Zoya Pepper and O.P.I. Chop-sticking to My Story for the water marble decal.

The brown glitter is Hits Glitter Forte 389 Brown.

NOPI Khloe Had A Lam-Lam skittle mani

One of my favorite polishes of all time is Nicole by OPI Khloe Had A Lam-Lam. I'm not a huge Kardashian fan, but this darkened teal color is so great. I'm almost 1/2 way through one bottle so I'm gonna have to find another soon.

For today's mani, I added a holo topper of Hits Hefesto (the original!) then stamped using Konad Black and Bundle Monster BM305.

31 Day Challenge, Part 2!: Day 5, Blue Nails

I didn't have time to do all the manis I wanted to before Christmas, but since it's still winter here (and will be for a while!) I figured that it would still be okay for this mani. I was inspired by this mani from Nail Polish Wars. 

To fit today's theme, I used A-England Tristam for my base except on my ring finger. On my ring finger, I used a base of Essie Marshmallow followed by Glitter Gal Light as a Feather.

For the snowflakes, I first painted on white polish then followed it up with Light as a Feather.  The black on the snowman is Hits Zeus.

Check out other blue manis below.

Hits Glitter Forte 389 Brown

This awesome polish is another gift from my awesome Halloween swap. Hits Glitter Forte 389 (no name that I could find) is a beautiful brown/copper glitter in a sheer brown base. I love the Hits polishes, but since the bottles are so small I decided to layer this over OPI Suzi Loves Cowboys.

The result? A gorgeous brown glittery mani perfect for fall and very suitable for work. Suzi Loves Cowboys turned out to be the perfect base for Glitter Forte 389 as well.

Hits Zeus and Dionisio

I meant to have this post up yesterday, but I have no idea where my whole day went! This is a really simple but cute mani that I did. I used Hits Zeus on my ring and thumb fingers (still is and always will be my favorite accent style) and Hits Dioniso.  I used 2 coats of each to get the full opacity that I needed. The weird thing about these polishes is that Zeus had a normal skinny-ish brush while Dionisio has a large wonky shaped brush. So strange.

After painting my nails, I decided to rummage through my nail art stickers and added a cute bow to my ring and thumb fingers (I forgot to get a picture of my thumb!) and tiny teal stars to the corners of my other nails.

Hits Hera

Hits Hera is such a beautiful holo. I love turquoise green color that is it (if you all don't know, I'm a sucker for green polish).  I didn't have to do any cleanup when I applied this polish despite the wacky brush.  This picture is also taken after 2 days of wear. I used top coat to make it last longer, and it didn't affect the holo at all.

Monday Mani: Sponging

I loved using Hits Hefesto for the mani in my last post so I decided to incorporate it along with this week's Monday Mani theme: sponging.

For my base, I used 2 coats of OPI Stranger Tides.  Next I sponged on some Nicole by OPI Khloe Had a Lam-Lam, my favorite color of all time. I'm still working on my sponging skills.  I followed it up with 1 coat of Hits Hefesto which made this mani AMAZING!

Onto the pictures!

Zoya Sooki Holo-fied

I actually did this mani last week for Mother's Day. Red is my mom's favorite color so it was inspired by her.

I started off with 2 coats of Zoya Sooki. It's such a beautiful true red. I planned on layering this so I left it at 2 coats, but I could have used a third as you can see you VNL here.  There's no clean-up here since I planned on layering it.

I decided to pump up the volume and layered 1 coat of Hits No Olimpo Hefesto on top. Hefesto is a sheer silver holo that makes it great for layering over other colors to holo-fy them.  I think I need 12 more bottles of it.

The only problem with Hefesto is the brush is kinda large and hard to work with. On the left is a China Glaze brush, middle is Hits, and right is O.P.I.  I have small nail beds to large brushes are hard for me to work with.

Okay, onto holo picture spam!

And a close-up to show all that holo glitter. I apologize for the bit of mess. Sooki is super pigmented (though thin) so it was hard to get the red off my skin!