Swirly Drag Marble Flowers | Video Tutorial

Drag marbling is so fun and easy. I'm just addicted lately! I got two Essie polishes a few months ago. They're red and pink so I thought they'd go great together! People keep sending me little drag marble compilation videos so I was feeling super inspired. I made a video tutorial this time! Let me know what you think! It's only my second video tutorial, I think it's much better than my first one, but you be the judge!

Polishes Used:

Essie - With The Band (Red)

Essie - Cascade Cool (Pink)

How To:

Start with your base color. You can do 2 coats if the polish you're using is thin. If you do this, let the first coat dry and then start the next step with your 2nd coat of fresh wet polish.

While the red polish is still wet add three dots of pink quickly. Drag marbling is done on very wet nail polish. I put a big dot in the middle of the nail and two smaller ones at the tip and base.

Use a dotting tool, needle, tooth pick, etc and swirl through the polish in any pattern you like. For this design I took a dotting tool and dragged it into the dot with a curving motion. Then I picked up my tool and started a new line into the dot still doing a curving motion. The dotting tool picked up some of the pink polish and that's what makes the little pink rounded spike things on the outside of the swirls.

Honestly, this was pretty confusing to try and type out. I really hope it made sense and I made the video tutorial just for this reason! Hope you guys aren't too confused!

I also want to invite you guys to come join a new Facebook group that I just became admin for. It's Nailart Adventures on Facebook! We have contests occasionally and it's ever growing with new members all the time.

I'm also introducing a YouTube new playlist with all my nail tutorials to make it easy to find them all. Right now I only have 2 but I plan to make lots more!

 Have you gotten into drag marbling lately too? Send me your pictures for a possible shout out on my social media accounts! ❤❤

Braces Update!! A Year And A Half Later!

Previous post - Next post

I know a lot of you must be wondering, what happened to her braces posts?!!

Well last year we moved from California to Montana. I'm sure many of you have moved before, so you know it's quite the ordeal. I got behind in taking pictures for my updates, so I just didn't write any posts. Finally over a year after my move I'm here to give you an update because soon the braces will be gone!!!

Top: Now. August 2016
Bottom: Before I got my first set of wires put on. June 2014
**There are some issues you can't see in the bottom picture. Please check out my first post for more info and pictures on what was wrong with my teeth.

I just had an appointment a few days ago. I have 3 appointments lined up fairly close to each other so we can begin the removal process! First I go back around the beginning of October to get fitted for my bottom retainer, then about 2 weeks later I return to get my braces removed, and probably will do some other stuff while I'm there. Then 1 week later I have a follow up appointment, and after that I'm pretty much done! I am just ecstatic! I've had braces since 2014!!

Top: Now
Left: Before
Right: Sometime in the middle of my treatment, not long after I first got them on.

Now for a little information on my new orthodontist and the changes we had to make because we switched orthodontists.

My orthodontist is a super nice guy. He definitely has a lot of experience. He worked with us to make a payment plan that would fit our needs. Another orthodontist we went to, recommended by the old orthodontist, wanted a lot of money up front, and still wanted large monthly payments. I don't think my old orthodontist knew he would ask for such an outrageous amount when he suggested him. How could he have possibly known when he works in California and this guy works in Montana? Anyways..

My orthodontist wanted to reposition my brackets. The plan was to just take them off and place them where they need to be. He says he has to do this even with his own patients sometimes. It's just hard to know where the teeth will need to be later on as they change. He also wanted to replace my clear brackets with metal ones, only on my lower teeth.

At my appointment for all of this, things didn't go as planned. The brackets just kind of fell apart. So he had to place all new ones on. He didn't charge us extra for this though! Super nice guy.

If you've seen my first braces post you'll see that I had this blue stuff on my bottom molars. It was to keep my top teeth from biting off my lower brackets. My new orthodontist took those off right away, thank goodness!!! So above are my teeth now, without those evil little blue things! Hahaha.

When I left to go to Denmark for 3 months they made sure I had lots of supplies! I also chose hot pink for my braces color. We decided that color would probably hold up the best. I think it did! It ended up being a pale pink by the time I got back, not brown or yellow which was my biggest concern. I really recommend that color if you have to be out of town for a long time!

I normally get clear on my upper teeth so that would have gotten yellow and nasty so quick! My appointments are about every 6 weeks and they're always gross by the time I go back. I look so forward to my next appointments because of this. It depends a lot what you eat though. So if you've got clear braces like me and get clear on top, just try to avoid food that stains them if you're worried about it.

I've been going to this guy for a year now. He first estimated I'd get them off around July-September. Now I'm getting them off in October, even though I skipped about 2 or 3 appointments with my vacation!

I've had to wear rubber bands almost the whole time, including while I was on my vacation. I wear them as often as I can! This may be why I'm getting them off a little bit earlier than his estimate. Of course it just really depends on how your teeth move and mine have always seemed to move very quickly. Either way I'm getting them off about 2 years later which was my estimate from the very start.

I'll probably be making my final braces post when I finally get them off, so stay tuned and look out for the final post sometime in late October or early November!! ❤

How I Store My Nail Art Supplies

This is a post I've wanted to make ever since I started this blog! Back then I just kept everything in some little boxes I had. It took up a lot of room and wasn't very organized, but it was the best storage I had at the time. I didn't have nearly the amount of supplies that I do today, so I was so glad when I finally found something to store it all in!

I got this lovely little craft storage container from Joann's. I had been looking for some kind of container to keep my nail supplies in since installing racks wasn't really something that was going to work for me. I looked just about every time I was out at a place that might have some storage containers. All of the small containers were too shallow to fit most of my nail polishes. But finally, I found the perfect one for me! So glad I didn't settle for something else!

All my tall nail polish goes in the top compartment. OPI, SinfulColors, Sally Hansen, and many others. I have some smaller polishes in there as well just to take up room so they don't fall over if I decide to move it.

Starting off with the bottom box, this is where I keep the shorter nail polish, as well as the water based polish since I don't use them as often. There is a jar of Vaseline, sometimes I use it to keep my skin clean while doing certain designs.

The second box. This box doesn't have dividers like the bottom one. Instead it's like there are very shallow dips in the plastic. It helps stuff from just flying all over the place.

This has all the stuff I use for little details like gems, nail tape, decals, glitter, nail art pens, dotting tools, makeup sponges for gradient designs, and some other stuff. I keep my files and buffer in here too.

In the top box I keep orange sticks, pointy q-tips, and normally nail polish remover pads. I ran out and haven't restocked my storage bin with them, so they're just in the bathroom at the moment. I also keep my nail clippers in here for easy access. The plastic squares you see in the back are dividers. I haven't had a use for them yet so I just keep them there.

This container ends up being pretty heavy because of all the little glass bottles, but I couldn't be happier with it!

Let me know how you store your nail supplies in the comments down below, or on any of my social media pages! I'd love to see it! 💅

And if you happen to have a bigger collection than mine, check out MakeSpace! It's an on-demand storage company that's rapidly growing and changing the way cities use self storage. View their ever growing loctions list here.