Adventures in Beauty - Marbled Nails

I love all things "beauty". Hair, make-up, nails - all of it. In my downtime, I have been known to read blogs, watch YouTube videos, and more recently stalk Pintrest, for hours looking at tips, tricks, techniques and ideas. I try a lot of them, and usually report to a handful of my friends on how it went. After many of them urged me to start blogging about it, I decided that would be a great way to get me blogging more often!

So...I give you - Adventures in Beauty!

This is my most recent (as in, yesterda) endeavor. I've always liked to have my nails done or painted. It makes me feel more feminine. And I have about 10 go-to colors that I alternated based on time of year. The problem? They were all a variation of red. Pink, reds, maroons...and one dark purple. They served their purpose, but as I scrolled through pictures on Pintrest, I found myself attracted to colors that were not in the red family. I found one post in particular that I knew I had to try. Nail marbling!

So, on Monday, I took my 20% off coupon to Ulta and I bought 4 new colors.

O.P.I. "French Quarter for Your Thoughts" (a lovely Greige, which is a mix of gray and beige) and Orly "Blue Collar" (almost a turquoise), "Lemonade" (obviously, yellow) and "Gumdrop" (seafoam green)

I was set and ready to tackle the daunting task. And I do mean daunting. This is a tedious, temperamental process. I'd tried it for fun once before, but with a couple of my shades of red, and it hadn't turned out great. But I was determined.

I got my little bowl of room temp water, my orange stick (or tooth pick), my lotion, a paper towel, some tissues and the colors. (Yeah, see, daunting.)

First, I painted my nails with the Greige color.

After it was good and dry, went one finger at a time. I applied a liberal amount of lotion, making sure to not rub it in all the way.

Now, I failed to take a picture of the next part because you have to move so fast...but I will explain it as best I can and link a helpful YouTube video below.

Next, you drop the colors into the water. I started with the greige, let is spread out, then dropped the almost turquoise on top, let that spread, dropped the yellow, let is spread, dropped the seafoam green, let it spread - and repeated the process. Once I had the number of layers I wanted (again, speed is key), I gently pulled my orange stick through the "oil spill" of nail polish until it was swirled to my liking. Then, I put my nail directly into it, waited a few seconds, used the orange stick to remove the color from around my finger, and pulled my finger out. Then, I simply wiped away the polish from my skin (thanks to the lotion, it came right off). I did have to clean up the close edges with nail polish remover (I snapped the picture before I'd done that).

It's far from perfect, but I love it anyway. Be patient with it...it's going to take some time...but the end result is so, so cool. And if you want to SEE it done, or if my directions confused you (very possible), check out this video tutorial. (She uses tape instead of lotion, but I found lotion much easier.)