I'm so glad to have found this thread! I adore nail polish, and nail art is a way for me to show my creative side.

Today I'm wearing OPI your web or mine, with stamped roses in OPI alpine snow over the top. It's quite girly for me, but I like it!

Ferris that sounds nice! Are you into water marbling? I've watched some interesting videos on Youtube so I'm kind of curious about it.

I've tried water marbling... There's a weblog I follow and the lady that does it always does these amazing things with water marbling and she had an awesome spring theme I tried for April. It came out much messier than hers, but I got a ton of compliments the week I wore it. I could never replicate it; it seems like the more I try the worst I get LOL I haven't done it in a while because it's kind of time consuming, but I'd love to give it another go sometime.

(Off topic) Lakilaulea!!!!! Look at your ticker! You are doing wonderful!!!! Keep it up!

It looks time-consuming, but it's so pretty! Maybe I will attempt it one day when I have some extra time.

SunnySide99 - Aawww, thanks!!!! I just updated it this morning, I was SOOOO happy when I saw the scale I had to update my ticker! I've been really trying to outdo some girls on these challenges on the MOTOACTV site, and everytime I think I had an awesome day I look at the leaderboard and see that they've wiped the floor with me! On one of our challenges we go by hours worked out and when my stats updated to 3 1/2 hours total, I saw that the girl in the lead is up to 14!!! I swear, she's not even real. She's gotta be some sort of cyborg. You can tell by her profile pic she's some hardbodied triathlete, and she's really motivating me to try and at least catch up

Back to topic----there's so many things I learned with water marbling. You need the right tools---I found out bamboo sticks and toothpicks won't work---you need a paper cup---my polish ate through Styrofoam and got stuck to plastic cups---and room temperature bottled water. And not all brands of polish work. China Glaze, Essie, and some Sally Hansens work for me, OPI, Revlon, and some Sally Hansens don't. It was just too much! Now I'm into dotting. That I can do LOL And sponging is fun and gets me compliments as well, especially when I go for the wild color combos.

water marbling looks really cool. I may have to try it.

I really want to get a caviar (?) manicure... I think it looks so different! But, I heard it does not last more than a couple days, so I'm not sure it's worth it

I just got a Gel manicure. My nails are so SHINY!

SunySide99- I love water marbling! I tried it a few times with horrific results, but then I looked around online and found some really helpful advice.
Now I can do it easily and fairly quickly (I can never be bothered taping off my fingers, so I spend a little longer cleaning polish off my fingers)- all in all it takes me about 30 minutes for all of the marbeling and clean up.

This is what works for me, and I've had great results every time I've done this: I use a glass cup, with a diameter of under 3 inches. The bigger the surface area, the more trouble I have, so I go smaller rather than bigger. I don't think it matters if you use glass or plastic, but I find glass to be best- I just don't use it to drink out of anymore! I use tap water and have never had any issues, although it's really important to get it to room temperature. When I first started I used it straight out of the tap, and that was too cold. So I pour a glass of water about an hour before I want to do the marbeling, and then give myself a manicure and put on a base colour.

I use mostly OPI polish and I've found it works great for marbeling. I'd imagine any polish that isn't too think or too runny would work well. I hold the brush really close to the surface so the polish doesn't have far to fall. Then I build up the bullseye and once that's done I use a toothpick to draw in the polish- but you can't start from the outermost ring. Always start further towards the centre.

I tend to do two fingers at a time, and clean my fingers in between. I find the only way to stop any issues with the design smudging is to put my fingers in at a 45 degree angle, hold them there for a count of 10, use the toothpick to gather up the leftover polish, then remove fingers at the same angle. Then I clean up those fingers before moving on to the next ones. I use a drop of polish I don't like as much to cover the surface of the glass in between times, then gather the whole thing up, and it cleans the water surface ready for the next go.

It's hard work to remember all of that sometimes, but it produces beautiful results!

Sorry for that long reply- not sure how useful the info, but I remember how frustrated I was until I found that these tips worked for me!

kisskiss- How are you enjoying the gel manicure? I'm tempted to go and get one myself! Also, I've never tried the caviar manicure but a friend of mine does them on special nights out. She does it herself- she gets the microbeads from art & craft stores, paints her nails, puts on a top coat onto an accent finger and then sticks it in the beads. She says it doesn't last very long, but it looks awesome and is inexpensive if you do it yourself.

Lakilaulea - Seriously that is so exciting. I think a little competition to keep yourself motivate is good, but be proud of what you have been able to accomplish so far.

kisskiss - I had a friend who had a caviar manicure. It was so pretty and different, but it only lasted for 2 days.

FerrisW - Thank you soooo much for your detailed message. I appreciate it greatly and it helped a great deal! It's also good to know what type of polishes work better than others!

Has anyone tried any good 'indie' nail polish makers? I redid my nails today (I generally do it twice a week and I'm finding its a good way to curb my tv watching munchies since you can't stuff your face if your nails are wet!) in Lush Lacquer's Black Friday.

Great thread. I love them too-but I like a variety and the nice ones usually cost 3x more than I can budget. I usually buy Pure Ice from walmart. $1.94 or so a bottle. Right now I'm wearing 'Naughty Girl'.

I am TOTALLY a nail polish junkie !!! I have probably around 50-60 bottles and can't possibly use them all before they get nasty, but I keep buying them of course !! My favorite brands are OPI and China Glaze...I do like Essie but it tends to chip for me too easily, but their colors are great.

Today I am wearing an older OPI called Boris and Natasha ...great fall plum color.

Today I'm wearing OPI Fly underneath a layer of glittery mermaid scales by Dollish Polish. I'm absolutely in love with how it looks- subtle glitter, and I love any colour in the electric blue to teal range, so I'm really pleased with them.

This morning I noticed that new new Bond OPI polishes were on sale for $10 on an online store, today only (that's incredibly cheap- here OPI costs between $18-25 in stores) and although I was two slow to get my two favourite colours, I snagged 5. I had a moment of 'Gosh, should I buy this?'. And what made me decide to get them was that although it was a fair bit of money to spent on polish, it would stop me easily spending that same amount on food and secretly binging during the week.

So nailpolish is going to stop me from undoing all of my hard weightloss work!

I've recently discovered NYC nail polish. I'm trying to get out of my comfort zone with the pinks, red and shimmers and those nail polishes were 2 for $3. I bought prey of grey (basic grey) and precious peacock (green shimmer) and they look quite nice. Also it went on smoothly and the wear is not bad.

I adore OPI. I just painted my toenails in a gorgeous dark brown called Suzi Loves Cowboys. I never paint my fingernails, they just get messed up too quickly when I'm working inside a computer.

I am wearing Zoya Faye at the moment (pic from Temptalia)