Emerald City | Craftynail

Hey everyone! Today I’ve got a funky ruffian design for you! I got the idea from my friend Amy over at Ooh La La Nails who did this cool design a few weeks ago: Rainbow Mani. I decided to use a whole bunch of my Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Nail Colors for this ruffian. I went with colors that do not coordinate at all so it would look crazy and kinda fugly. In case you are wondering- yes, I did this on purpose! LOL

This mani took well over two hours and there’s 11 coats of polish including base and top coats! I only did two nails like this on my other hand since it was hard to paint with my left hand and it took forever. I learned an important lesson while working on this ruffian- I need to tie my hair up in a ponytail before working on my nails! My long hair was hanging all over the place while I was painting so my boyfriend kindly put a headband in my hair to help me out. But the headband didn’t cut it, and my hanging hair strands got stuck on my thumb nail while waiting for my topcoat to dry. UGH!! My thumb design got messed up so I painted it blue along with the other fingers on my right hand that didn’t have ruffian painted on them. The trials and tribulations of a nail painter!!

I made sure to alternate application of creams and shimmer polishes so the colors contrasted against each other. I think it worked, as this may be my craziest mani yet! Here’s the colors I used….

Gold ♥ Golden-I

Red ♥ Cherry Red

Silver ♥ Gunmetal

Pink ♥ Bubblegum Pink

Green ♥ Emerald City

Yellow ♥ Mellow Yellow

Purple ♥ Plum Power

Blue ♥ Blue Me Away!

I finally attempted my first water marble! I’ve watched so many youtube videos on water marbling that I thought I might ace the technique on my first try. Well, that was a good theory. I did have some issues… mostly because of water temperature I think. I used filtered water as everyone suggests, but my water may have been too cold because the polish didn’t spread out over the surface well. Also, I found that not all polishes behave the same way in water. I had to eliminate my white wet n wild polish because it was being a huge P.I.T.A. ! After 4 or 5 tries with different temps and polishes- this is what I came up with. Not too bad for a first timer I suppose. I love all the Irish colors! Oh, and if anyone has any marbling tips- please leave me a comment!

Hope everyone has a fantastic St. Patrick’s Day! I will be cooking a turkey. It’s not traditional at all, but I felt the need to cook this weekend and that’s what I had in the freezer ! My boyfriend is busy painting so I will occupy myself in the kitchen. No St. Patty’s pub crawl for this girl!