• Use filtered or bottled water.  I don't know why this helps exactly, but it does!
• Use room temperature water.
• "Anchor" your bulls-eye by using your orange wood stick to pull a few areas of the outside ring so they are stuck to the walls of your cup or whatever container you choose.  This will keep everything stationary when you drag your pattern in.
• Make sure you don't have an overhead fan on!  The polishes will dry too fast on top of the water and you won't be able to get them to spread or to swirl your design in.
• Try to dip your nail in at an angle rather than flat to the water surface.  This will help prevent air bubbles.  I did get a few bubbles under my design.

So, I hope those tips help some people!  And if it doesn't work out again, revisit another time with different polishes.  I'm so glad I did, because this has now become one of my favorite nail designs.

Hello everyone!!  I'm sorry I haven't posted in a while, Mr. Sparkles and I took a trip to Denver this week, and things have been quite hectic preparing for that.

This is a mani I did last week.  I had an idea in my head that I wanted to do some nails that looked like scales on a dragon, although I don't think it turned out quite like I wanted.  I got some sequins to use from the nail supply store.  This was my first try using anything other than polish to do nail art.

Basically what I did was, polished my nails with 2 coats of Zoya Veruschka, plus top coat.  I applied the top coat to one nail, then added the sequins to that nail while the top coat was still tacky.  After I had sequins placed on each nail, I sealed that with another layer of top coat.  I made the black half moon line with a striping polish to add definition to the shape.  Finally, I went back and finished with one last coat of Veruschka to keep the matte finish.

While this mani didn't quite turned out how I had hoped, I was still fairly happy with it.  I really enjoyed the juxtaposition of the matte polish and shiny sequins.

Hi guys!  I did this stamping the other day with my Red Angel plates.  I used Color Club Puccilicious as my base color, and Color Club Revvvolution to stamp.  The pattern was from the RA-109 plate.  I like this pattern, but this wasn't my favorite mani.  The colors didn't have enough contrast for the pattern to be visible from farther away.

These pictures were taken in the lightbox I built.  I have it lit with 2 100w Ott-Lite bulbs in some regular desk lamps.  I'm still trying to work on figuring out the best angles and light positioning.  Anyone have any tips on how they have theirs set up?

What is your favorite Illamasqua polish?  How do you feel about bar glitter?

Hello, Everyone!!  I hope you are all enjoying your new year so far.  I'm a few days late, but this was my New Year's Eve mani.  I wanted something really sparkly, so I layered some glitters over a silver foil.  Unfortunately I didn't have any direct sunlight for pictures of this.  It was foggy and overcast in Houston all day NYE.  I'm sure it would have looked fabulous in the sun.

I started this off with one coat of China Glaze Icicle.  On my thumb and ring finger I added two coats of OPI Rainbow Connection, one coat of China Glaze Techno, and one coat of China Glaze Nova.  My other nails got two coats of Techno.