Summer Challenge: Favorite Mani

Summer Challenge coming to a close...

Hey everyone, look who is on time today! Today is the last day of the Summer Challenge. Sniff. I don't want it to be over!!

Here's what I got for ya! Do you recognize the mani?

Summer Challenge: Recreate Favorite Mani

I chose to do Isabella's manicure seen here for Favorite Beach Mani. I, of course, can't read a thing on the page except for medusa was her inspiration and it was her first marble. Sorry Isabella! I need to learn how to translate pages...

Summer Challenge: Recreate Favorite Mani

I still think hers is better. It's a little more fluid and the way it looks is just magical. I can't even tell you what it is that makes me so enamored by it, but I seriously did a few nails on a nail wheel and kept telling myself to pick a different manicure because I couldn't quite get it, but I kept going back to it.

Playing with Needle Marbling on a nail wheel

Products Used

Sally Hansen Miracle Growth
Sally Hansen CSM Great Tea
Sally Hansen CSM Calypso Blue
Sally Hansen White On!
Shimmer Cassandra
Seche Vite

You may not care about base and top coats but I figured I'd start adding them in. I've gotten a few questions about what I like to use, so there you go! =D

Does anyone care to know what tools I've used? Dotting tools, brushes, pins, dentures, combs, tape? Or you'll figure it out on your own? =)

Dry/Needle Marble

If you've never heard of this technique, it's a pretty cool one that I hadn't heard of until I saw a post by Copy That, Copy Cat (love her and her blog!) in which she does a tutorial on how to do a smokey french tip. Basically, you paint your base color, let it dry (important!) and then do a fresh coat of base coat and quickly paint on your accent color(s) and then using a needle/pin drag the wet paint to make your design. It creates really cool wisps and if your paint is thick enough and you move quickly enough, it'll come back and settle in the lines you made.

If you have any questions, let me know. I keep thinking about starting to do tutorials, but I feel my stuff is pretty straight forward. Copy That, Copy Cat has a great video tutorial for it anyway!

I can't wait to see what everyone else did for today!! You should check them out too!!

P.S. The Penguin Makeup Challenge!

Don't forget tomorrow is the start of The Penguin Makeup Challenge! If you want to join in, there is still time! Email me so I can get you the info for the Inlinkz code!