Water-marble day was one I always dreaded, not any more! I love water marble day cause I finally have the knowledge to work out what's wrong with a marble and fix it.

Today I've gone back to one of my favourite brands to water marble with, which become quite the indie polish world sensation with this collection simply for the fact that it water marbled so perfectly.  My bottles are getting pretty old now, at least two and a half years I'd say, and they still marble like they were new, even though the bottles are about two thirds full.

For today's design, I created the marbles on water and let the dry and applied them like decals.  It was so much cleaner doing it that way. I also felt I got better placement of the patterns and I didn't use up as much polish as doing it the regular water dipping technique. So if you have the time to allow the polish to dry in the cup, and at least two cups (I actually did three in case I messed up and needed another full pattern) then I highly recommend doing it the decal way.

Looking for some 'in-your-face' nails, well here they are.  For the Green prompt on the 31 Day Challenge I attempted a new to me free hand design of geometric gradient nail art.  The idea behind this design is very simple, a gradient of colours in stepping diamond shapes, but let me tell you that application isn't very simple.  I found this very hard to get neat straight lines and sharp pointed tips.

I only used two polish colours for this mani, plus a white base and black. From the Pipedream A Night In Vegas collection, Light of Day (yellow) and High Roller (green).  I just mixed those to together  to get the lime green for between Light of Day and High Roller. For the darker green, I just mixed a little black with High Roller.  I love that with the extra bit of black you can really see the shimmer that is in this polish, because generally this collection is described as a creme collection, but in fact each polish does have a shimmer.

I'm also going to confirm that I did paint all 10 nails of this.  I wish I'd taken a photo of both hands, cause I'm starting to impress the pants of myself with how alright the right hand looked.

Yeah, you knew this was coming. I've been playing with my pipe dream polishes over and over again since I got them, and I was yet to do a full water marble with them.  So here it is, I couldn't hold out any longer!

I have to say, I got so many compliments with these on my nails. I also love them so much that I ended up wearing them for about five straight days.  I really do have to say that it's not just the great formula on these for water marbling that I love, it's actually the complementary colour combo that you get when using the whole collection together. The shades are so cohesive and are really seen at their best when teamed up.

Pipe Dream has a new collection of creams releasing soon, I wonder how hard they will be to get? The colours look bright and saturated, just my thing!

I had another huge day at work today, very stressful and very busy.  Yesterday my section upgraded our intranet operating system and migrated all content from one site to another, which was the culmination of about 4 months of work.  Today everyone was back at work and it was the real test as to whether everything was ok or not.  My team was awesome fixing issues straight away, not that there were too many issues. But some things out of our control went wrong, which stressed me out pretty bad and the executives were very reactive about getting us to double and triple check everything.  Anyway, I made it through the day, and hopefully things can only get better from here. I think I might have an early night tonight.

So today I'll leave you with this little gem of a mani.  The combo of neon and this stamping image from on of the Moyou 80's plate definitely gave this mani a retro vibe.  In fact one of my work colleagues checked out this mani when we had a meeting together, and her comment was "hmm, they are very eighties", with a smile and a nod.  I was very impressed that they looked 80's to someone who wasn't a nail polish nutter!

I used Pipedream polish Day of Light, 110 degrees and Happy Hour for the gradient. Mundo de Unas black polish for the stamping and Swarovski crystals on my ring finger over black.

I might just be a little obsessed with playing with my new Pipedream A Night in Vegas Collection polishes.  I do apologize for that, because I know how hard they are to get.  If you are really desperate for a neon set that marbles well, check out this post from The Polished Perspective, as she shows you a range of alternatives that are easier to get your hands on.

Anyway, here is another look I created that is totally out of my comfort zone with lashings of pink and purple.

My base is just a simple polish that I mixed up myself using ultra holo silver glitter from Glitter Unique and suspension base.  The marble is done with On the list and VIP pass and a clear polish to create the gap to see through to the silver holo base.

I also used three Swarovski crystals in three different sizes, in pink, purple and silver.  Swarovski crystals are so much better than any acrylic ones. I have several wheels of acrylic ones and I doubt I will ever use them again. The Swarovski ones are reusable so the extra money you spend is definitely not wasted. I got mine off ebay.

Shortly after I received my Pipe dream polish A Night in Vegas Collection I tried them out for a water marble.  I mean really this is why just about every one wants the ANIVC, because it appears to create an instant miracle and allow the user to create incredible water marbles.  If you haven't seen amazing water marbles using the ANIVC then you clearly aren't the nail polish addict you think you are.

I've found that the number one trick to getting a good water marble is the polishes. You have to use the right polishes.  In my experience newer polishes than are thinner work best, if the polish has thickened up it will not spread.  Now I've had recent success mixing my own polishes to create great water marbles, but I don't have any neon pigments, so I was never able to mix up shades like these.

The truth is these ANIVC polishes do spread nicely in the water (although not quite as easily as my own mixed polishes do). I didn't need to use filtered water or anything, just some regular room temperature water from the tap. But apart from just spreading nicely, they are well pigmented and the colours are beautiful, both on their own but particularly when worn together.

The other thing I noticed about this collection is that they are in fact not a collection of cremes. Every polish in the collection has a very subtle shimmer, which can be seen on the nail with direct sunlight.

This mani features two nails wearing Pipe Dream Happy Hour, a water marble feature nail using all the colours from the ANIVC, and then my pinky and thumb were wearing FUN Lacquer King, for the added bling.

So now that I have dipped my toe (or finger in this case) in the water of marbling with the Pipe Dream ANIVC, I think my next mani will need to be a full ten finger water marble.

South East Australia has been suffering through a cold few days, brought on by a vortex of cold wind and rain from Antarctica. But when it comes to cold weather, us Aussies are pretty wussy! Most of us need to, how does the saying go... 'drink some cement and harden the f**k up'. Cause our cold days are nothing like what you northern hemisphere folks deal with every winter.  Ok, so it snowed in a bunch a places that never see snow, so of course all the news channels have been all over it, but seriously, it only got down to a daytime max of 6 degrees celsius here, so it wasn't that cold.

But what better way to laugh off the cold weather than with a neon sunset and palm tree inspired look.  I used three polishes from the Pipedream A Night in Vegas Collection for this, sponged on over a white base.  Stamping is from Born Pretty plate BP-L001 for the palm leaves and Moyou plate Back to the 80's 04.  

Yay for warm summery manis in the dead of winter!

Hey hey everyone, and welcome to the end of the week.  Yippee.  I'm so looking forward to the weekend because it's the middle of the school holiday's here, which means no kids sport first thing in the morning and nothing else planned!  I can sleep in on both Saturday and Sunday.  I'm so lucky that my husband is one of those people that automatically wakes up at the same time every day, so he is awake when the kids wake up. Me? I'm able to easily roll over and go back to sleep.  Man I love sleep.  My kids don't seem to understand how awesome sleep is, they always want to stay up late and don't understand what a sleep in is. I'm guessing sleep doesn't become awesome until your a teenager!

Anyway, I'm pretty excited to say that I finally got the Pipe Dream Polish A Night in Vegas Collection.  I had a very quick fingered friend in the USA that managed to get them for me during the last restock. The ANIVC restocks rival the Enchanted restocks for craziness from what I've read, so I'm eternally grateful that she managed to get these for me.

I had to restrain myself very hard not to do a watermarble first up.  I mean everyone does a watermarble with ANIVC and I needed to something a little different.  But of course I did have to use every colour.  The way I ended up doing it was using some thin straight vinyls that I got from Xroma Polish and Vinyls.  But don't worry, it is inevitable that I will do a marble with these very soon.

My base polish is FUN Lacquer Mistletoe which is a very blingy lime gold holographic glitter bomb.