HPB Presents Valentine's Hearts with Water Marble and Dry Marble

I hope everyone had a lovely Valentine's Day! I totally missed posting anything for Valentine's Day this year! For shame. However, I still wanted to get this out there because it was the first successful water marble I've done in a LONG while. Hooray! I wanted to see if I could make hearts using wet and dry marbling techniques.

Water Marble Hearts
For the marble, I used Zoya Mira and Fingerpaints Art You Kidding Me. I also applied a pale pink base color, Ulta Babydoll, to help the colors pop. White would also work well as a base. The glittery polish is Sally Hansen Gem Crush in Be Jeweled. I didn't make a tutorial for this, but I used this tutorial by James Nash as inspiration. Each nail is finished with Seche Vite top coat.

Indoor LED lighting

Outdoors, shade

Direct sun

The hearts on my thumb were made with dotting tools.

Dry Marble Hearts

I really love dry marbling. It's so much less messy than water marbling and the effects can be really cool. For this, I used the same polishes as for the water marble hearts. To do the dry marble, I painted a base color of either Fingerpaints Art You Kidding Me or Zoya Mira. Before the base color dried, I applied 4 dots down the center of my nail. Using a fine tipped dotting tool and starting near my cuticle, I dragged a line down the middle of the dots to create a heart effect. You could also use a pin or a toothpick instead of a dotting tool. Seal with Seche Vite top coat and that's that.

Indoor LED lighting

Outdoors, shade

Direct sun

So that's it. I think the marbling techniques work well for making hearts. Now that I had a successful water marble, there may be more water marbling in my future...

Thanks for reading!

-Melissa

Check out these other fabulous Valentine's manis from the talented Hobby Polish Blogger folks:

An InLinkz Link-up

Subtle French: Matte with Shiny Tips - Butter London Lady Muck and Victoriana

There are some polishes that beg to be paired with a matte top coat. Lady Muck and Victoriana from Butter London are two of those polishes. Really, they're beautiful no matter the finish, but the creamy formula with a subtle shimmer just works so well when matte.

Victoriana is one of my favorite Butter polishes. It's a gorgeous color and could be a one-coater if you use a thick coat. I used two thin-ish coats for this mani. It applies smooth as...er...butter (seriously, though). Lady Muck's formula is a bit thinner and required 3 thin coats to look opaque. Victoriana is on my middle and ring fingers, Lady Muck on my index and pinkie. I used Butter London's Matte Finish top coat on all nails.

While I love the matte look, I wanted to play around some more so I added shiny tips with a swipe of Butter London's Hardwear P.D. Quick Top Coat. The tips are so subtle that they were difficult to photograph as you might notice in the first picture. Where are the tips? I promise they're there.

Butter London Lady Muck and Victoriana - Outdoors, cloudy

The next photos show off the shiny tips a bit better. The color looks different in each picture, however. The light source is different in each one. There is no color correction or photoshop in any of these photos (except the addition of my watermark).

Butter London Lady Muck and Victoriana - Outdoors, indirect sun

Butter London Lady Muck and Victoriana - Indoors, fluorescent lighting

Butter London Lady Muck and Victoriana - Outdoors, direct sun

What do you think of this subtle French mani? I find that matte top coats don't protect against tip wear quite as well as shiny ones so perhaps the shiny tips will also serve a functional purpose here. Hooray for elegant utility!

Thanks for reading!
- Melissa


All polishes used in this post are from my personal collection and were not provided for review. All opinions are my own.