Thursday, October 23, 2014

Breast Cancer Awareness Month Water Marble: Shades of Pink

As promised, today's post is a water marble I designed for Breast Cancer Awareness month. My mother is a breast cancer survivor so this has a special meaning for me. However, I would like to take a moment to point out that although Breast Cancer may arguably get the most attention there are a number of other noteworthy causes that also deserve attention in the month of October.
For example, did you know October is also National Bullying Prevention Month, Depression Awareness Month, Healthy Lung Month, SIDS Awareness Month, and National Domestic Violence Awareness Month among others? Perhaps next October I will try to do some water marbles for those causes as well!

Anyway, I started a few days ago looking through my pink polish, combining colors and trying out designs. I had it narrowed down to three, pictured below. I decided the one on the left didn't have enough color contrast. The middle nail was my favorite, but I didn't really have enough of the pale pink polish to make every nail that way. So, I went with the design on the right on eight fingers and then used the middle design as an accent nail on my two middle fingers. The designs are drawn the same, the difference is the amount and order of the polishes used. I will explain a little later.
First, I did a base coat and a primer coat. The primer was in Pure ICE 'Splash'. This color didn't really spread well in the water, but I still wanted to incorporate it in the design so I did that by using it as the primer color. The bottle of the right is my shiny top coat from NYC which is the last step of the manicure. 












The colors I used in the actual water marble design are shown on the right. From left to right the colors are 'Fuchsia Power', 'Hot Magenta', 'Pink Punk' and 'Hard Core Party'. I built my bulls-eye for most of the nails by using one drop of each color in this order, then repeating that same sequence, which you can see below. 

I drew the pattern by drawing out from the center in four directions: up, down, right, and left. Then I drew in-between those lines from the outside in. I made a pattern chart to try to show what I did. Keep in mind, you don't have to use the same design I did, you don't even have to use the same design on each nail! I am just showing what I did to get the effect shown. The #9 smiley face shows I dipped my drawing tool in the center to draw it together and clean up the design a bit at the end. The picture below the chart is what the design should look like if you are doing the same thing. 

I had my nails taped before building the bulls-eye, that way the polish isn't drying in the water while you're busy taping up your nails. I dipped my nails one at a time so I could capture the pale pink leaf-like petal on the center of each nail. The only thing I did different on the 'accent' middle fingers, was vary the order of the drops when building the concentric circles. I added a drop of the 'Hard Core Party' every other drop. So it went, 'Fuchsia Power', 'Hard Core Party', 'Hot Magenta', 'Hard Core Party', Pink Punk' 'Hard Core Party', 'Fuchsia Power' (this is because the first ring of 'Fuchsia Power' will probably be dry by the time you start drawing the design and therefore not usable, but I still wanted the color in the final product) and finally 'Hard Core Party'. Then draw the pattern the same as before and dip down in the same place. 

While your nail is in the water you will carefully use a q-tip to clean the excess paint from the surface of the water. This is to allow you to remove your finger from the water without pulling it through the extra polish, which would smudge your design. Removing your finger slowly and tapping the tip of it on some paper towers gently will help prevent those pesky bubbles I mentioned in an earlier posting. 


These are my final results. The upper picture is my right hand and the picture to the left is my left hand. When the polish is completely dry, you can add your top coat and use a q-tip or flat brush dipped in nail polish remover to clean up around your cuticles. Enjoy your manicure! 

Coming up on the blog next time will be a knitting project update! As always, thanks for reading and feel free to leave comments!

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