Kiss Me...

...I'm not Irish.  Well, maybe a little, but not enough to count.  LOL

Good morning, Kitschies!  I hope you have beautiful weather wherever you are.  It's supposed to be in the high 70s today and right now it's clear and not a breath of wind.  I got to bed at a half-way decent hour last night and I feel a little more rested today.  It could partly be because I'm only working half-day today.  I'm playing hookie and taking Nate to see a movie.  Is it considered hookie if my employer knows and already granted my time off request?  *giggle*  I was supposed to take my bestie's oldest boy along with, but...*some*body had other plans.  Anyway...I'm almost out of here for the day and that makes me feel good!!

Last week I dug out my green and white polish to do a water marble for St Patty's Day.  Out of all the marbling I've done, I think this one is my favorite.  And not only do you get to see the end result, I'm going to share a sort of tutorial with you on how I do my water marbling.  Take a seat...there's gonna be a lot of pics to share.

First...gather your equipment including scissors, paint brush for clean up, Scotch tape, toothpicks, acetone (also for clean up), a cup with room temperature filtered water, base coat, polish colors and top coat.  The colors I picked for this marble are Sally Hansen White On and ChG Jolly Holly from the 2010 holiday collection.

After you apply your base coat, start with one coat of one of your colors.  You don't have to worry too much about application because this is just a base - you won't see much of it.  If you're unsure of which color to use as a base, pick one of the lighter colors or a color you think will be thinner than the others to give it a bit more opacity in the marbling.

Once your base color has dried a bit, wrap each finger with Scotch tape to give a barrier to your skin.  If you don't do this, you'll have quite the mess to clean up when you're finished.  Be sure to get the tape all the way to the nail on the under side of your fingers.

Using your polish, alternate drops, creating a bulls eye pattern like you see here.  It took me a while to figure out how to get this just right.  The thing that worked for me is having room temperature filtered water.  If it's too cold, the polish hardens and glops and won't spread well.

Then using your toothpick, lightly drag it across the rings of polish to create a design like you have here. You can play around with it as much as you like, but know that the more you move the polish around, the finer, more lined design you'll get.

Pick an area of the design you want on your nails, place your finger nail down in to the image.  Be sure to use your toothpick to collect any polish that's floating around on the water before you bring your finger back up.  The tape shields your fingers from a lot of the excess polish, but every once in a while, some sneaks past the tape (notice my middle finger).

Once you are finished with all the fingers on one hand, peel or cut off the tape using scissors.  You won't have much to clean up if you taped good enough.  Either way, though, using straight acetone makes clean up a breeze.

Let's see the end result, shall we?

Please excuse the whiteness on my middle finger - that's from having to use acetone to clean up what wasn't shielded by the tape.  I really, really like how this one turned out.  Definitely my favorite so far!

This is my left hand with flash (above) and in sunlight (below).  It's hard to pick a favorite, but on this hand it would have to be my index and ring fingers.

I'm horrible at taking pics of my right hand so there's only one (this was taken in indirect sunlight).  On this hand, I like the pinkie and index the best.  I liked the thumb a lot too, but my topcoat caused a little drag.

This marble even gave me great designs on the under side of my nails!  I usually have great wear with my marbles because the tips are already wrapped with polish - hard to get tip wear when the tips are wrapped!

Last one - promise.  Here's a closer look at my thumbs.  I like them both - probably the left more than the right because the pattern is so different from the others.

*whew*  Tired of pictures?  Yeah, me too.  Kinda.  If you'd like a better tutorial for water marbling, check out My Simple Little Pleasures.  She does awesome marbles and provides a tutorial for pretty much each design she does.

Happy St Patty's Day!  If you go out to celebrate...be careful!!  Don't drink too many green beers.