Picture on left was taken inside under artificial light, and the one on the right was taken in the shade.
Please forgive the rough skin around my finger tips and cuticles, but my nails have had a pretty tough time over the last few days. My index finger and my middle finger on my left hand, and my thumb on my right hand, all have patches on them. They broke half-way down my nails - they have all pulled away from the nail bed down the side of the nails because of the chemotherapy damage, and they are still very thin and fragile there. I still don't know whether this damage will be permanent, or if they will grow back onto the nail bed as the new nail growth comes through. Only time will tell! I went out today and bought some Revitanail "Strengthener", "Keratin Strengthening Serum", Nourishing Oil" and "Hand & Nail Cream". They are on special at Terry White's Pharmacies, 3 items for the price of 2, this week (in Australia), and I'm going to start using them all as often as possible. I'm afraid I haven't been following my own advice lately because I've been so busy, and have also been feeling really depressed and not at all motivated, so I have to start practicing what I preach again and try to get things back on track.
Now, on to my water marble manicure. I started with 2 coats of Sally Hansen "Hard As Nails" strengthener because all my nails are so fragile, and I'm hoping this will help to keep them from breaking. I got 6 bottles of it REALLY cheap before Christmas on eBay, but forgot I had it. When my nails broke (after I'd stopped crying - literally), I started thinking about what strengthening base coats I had that I could use, and I remembered I had this. So, God willing, I won't have any more breaks for a while.
I then added two coats of OPI "Alpine Snow" white cream polish to all my nails. I don't really like this polish because I need three coats to get a smooth finish, but because I was actually planning to do a plastic wrap marble manicure (tutorial here http://polishandpearls.com/watercolor-nails/ and elsewhere online), I just left it at two coats. However, I couldn't get this manicure style to work with the polishes I wanted to use, so I decided to try an actual water marble instead (tutorial here http://www.beautybay.com/EssentialBeauty/Articles/watermarblenailstutorial and in many other places online).
I then smeared Vaseline around all my nails and part-way up my fingers to make cleaning up a lot easier, because water marbling is very messy. I had to be careful not to get any of the Vaseline on the actual nails, because it would have stopped the nail polish from going onto the nails.
Next, I filled my bowl with tepid water straight from the tap, and added drops of OPI "Alpine Snow" (white), Face of Australia Pastels "Boys 'N' Berries" (blue), OPI "Mod About You" (pale pink) and OPI "Planks A Lot" (lilac) (in this order). I did this three times for each design (twelve drops in all), and then used a toothpick to make my design, following the above tutorial as a guide. All the polishes spread over the water really well, which was great. I used a small glass bowl because I wanted to do all my nails at the same time, instead of individually or in pairs, which is the usual way it is done, because I was so frustrated that the other design hadn't worked and wanted to get it over and done with. My design was a random one, instead of any particular design, in which I just swirled the colours around and through each other until I was happy with the distribution of the colours. Then I just dipped all five fingers of my left hand in the bowl at once, and repeated all this with the other hand.
I finished off my manicure with one coat of Revlon "Quick Dry Top Coat", which gave me a beautiful, glossy finish. I am rather pleased with the end result, and really love the way the colour combination worked out. Of course, I still have a lot to learn about this technique, but with all the advice and tutorials available on YouTube, and numerous blogs and websites online, I should be able to have a lot of fun trying out new designs, and a multitude of colour combinations, in the future. It really is quite easy to do, I found, and the mess was easy to clean up because I had used the Vaseline around my nails and fingers. Next time I'm going to try using sticky tape around my nails and fingers, and see how that goes.
Thank you so much for visiting, and I hope you'll come back often to see what I have to share with you. If you so wish, you can follow me by filling in one of the boxes at the top right-hand side of the page, and I'd love you to share it with your nail-art friends. Now I'm off to put some cuticle oil on my cuticles and lots of hand-cream on my hands. I couldn't believe how dry they were until I took the photos. My new phone has a really good camera, and it's picking up flaws in my manicures, and every little bit of damage to my nails, cuticles and hands, which don't show up when you just look at them day to day. So, I've got lots of work to do to repair all the damage, as if I didn't have enough problems with my nails already. Oh, well, that's my own fault, I guess, for letting things slide.
Have a wonderful day, and may God bless you!
Hugs
Christine
(Please check out my other blog below, too.)
Words of Life and Hope
http://wordsoflifeandhope.blogspot.com.au/
Christine
(Please check out my other blog below, too.)
Words of Life and Hope
http://wordsoflifeandhope.blogspot.com.au/
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