One Year Blogiversary Guest Post!

(Hi everyone! Today we have another guest post from Amanda of the Nail Polish Enthusiast blog. It's a special one as today is my one year blogiversary and also her birthday! Thank you all for your support over the last year! Enjoy!)

Hello again, Janna's readers!

I'm here with a very special post for you: Janna's 1 year blogiversary post! (It also happens to be my birthday, but let's focus on the important stuff here.) Janna is in Spain and has given me the honor of her one year post, so we decided on a celebration theme. Instantly, Janna and I both thought of Milani Gems, a dupe for Deborah Lippmann's Happy Birthday. It's a sparse glitter with a variety of colors in it, but we'll get to that soon.

Step one was figuring out what color to layer it over. I couldn't figure out what color scheme I wanted to do, since Gems has so many colors and I wanted all the glitter to stand out. I swatched it over Zoya Phoebe, Misa The Grass is Greener on My Side, OPI Chapel of Love, and Color Club Pucci-licious (I still don't understand that name, by the way).

 

For some reason, Zoya Phoebe stuck out to me as the most celebration-y of the bunch. The blue and glitter just seemed to scream cupcakes and celebrating and fun drinks (okay, maybe the last one is more of an adult celebration technique...). Here's Phoebe on her own:

 

 

Phoebe is a matte polish from one of Zoya's summer 2011 lines, Mod Mattes. This is shown with 2-3 coats and no topcoat. It dries with a shimmery finish, something unusual for a matte but somehow very appealing. (Ignore the poor cleanup, I wanted to wait until I put Gems on to clean up completely.)

 

Finally, I added Gems to my index and thumb, two coats each. I thought I would add it to all my fingers but I thought it stood out more as an accent than on every finger. Then I just added topcoat to all my nails. (I now see that my cleanup on my middle finger wasn't as good as I thought in person. Hmph. That's the trouble with up close pictures, I guess!)

 

Blurry to show the sparkliness and shininess with topcoat, mmmm:

 

 

What do you ladies think? Would you have chosen Phoebe, TGIGOMS (what a long name, Misa!), Chapel of Love, or Pucci-licious? Would you have done all nails with Gems?

xoxo,
Amanda

(Thanks again, Amanda! I love the accent nail and removal was probably much easier =] But Gems looks great over all of the colors! And Happy Birthday! Thanks for reading everyone! -Janna)

Guest Post! Nina Ultra Pro Purple X-ing

(Hi everyone! I've finally arrived at the University of Santiago de Compostela! Time to get to work =] Today I have for you a guest post from Amanda of the Nail Polish Enthusiast blog. Definitely go check her out!)

Hi ladies! Today I'm posting for Janna while she's in Spain (hola querida! estas usando tu espanol? espero que si!). This is quite an honor, so I picked a polish I thought both Janna and I would adore, and I think I found it. It hits all the things I love about polish: cheap ($2.99!), easily accessible, beautiful, and a one-coat dream.

Here's Nina Ultra Pro, which is available at Sally's. The polish is called Purple X-ing, which I mistakenly called Purplexing for about a week until my friend pointed it out. This is a deep, almost royal purple with silver and purple glitter and slightly larger holo glitter in it. The picture below shows the texture (slightly gritty) and the sparkle pretty well, although it isn't so color accurate (the bottle is).

And finally, a macro shot of the bottle. Look at that sparkle!

Applying this polish was heavenly. Did I mention that is only one coat on my nails?! I loved this color, although I only wore it for one day since it started to chip and I was getting behind on manis to post on my blog and Janna's.

I hope you enjoyed this guest post! Nice meeting all of you ;)

xoxo,
Amanda


(Gracias Amanda! I hope you all enjoyed this guest post and expect to be hearing from Amanda again really soon ;])

Hola!

Hi everyone!

This is a quick post to say that I'm alive and very well. Barcelona is beautiful and I'm going to enjoy my last 2 days here for sure.

I've decided that I'm going to do my next post once I get to a place where I have more time, which will be starting the 18th when I'm in Santiago. I'm really sorry, but I don't think I have enough time to do a post until then. There's too much to see!

That being said, I hope all is well. If you'd like, leave a comment telling me if you've ever been to Spain. If so, where? Would you like to see pictures from my trip?

Thanks for reading!

Janna

Face Paint Friday - Have Makeup, Will Travel

Hello!

Two days til my Spanish adventure! I still really need guest bloggers, so email me at paradise423@gmail.com or tweet me at @cleverncolorful to let me know if you're interested! Nail, makeup, hair, skincare...any beauty related things are encouraged!

So for this week's Face Paint Friday, I'm going to show you the makeup I'm bringing on my adventure. My trip is 3 days in Barcelona, then 3 days in Madrid, then 4 weeks at the university at which I'll be studying, so there's a lot of moving around. I actually think while I'm at the university I have to change dorms halfway through as well. My favorite makeup product is eyeshadow, and at home I use many different palettes when doing a look, but it seemed impractical to bring a lot of small palettes with me across the world, and I didn't seem to have a bigger palette that included all the colors I use (pinks, greens, purples, browns...occasionally blues and smokey colors). I also couldn't bear to think of what would happen if I brought one of my favorite palettes and it BROKE in transport. **shudders**...the horror.

I went to CVS to try and find a big palette with enough shadows in it to keep me from wearing the same eyeshadow shades for 5 weeks (can you imagine?). I almost bought a Maybelline 10-shade palette, about the size of a playing card, until I found this:

This is a beauty pack from The Color Workshop. It includes 3 eyeshadow palettes in compacts, 4 eyeliner pencils, 4 nail polishes, two lipglosses, and 3 palettes that have 1 blush and 8 lipgloss shades. It cost me a whopping $10.

Here are some closer pictures!

The eyeliners. Black, Brown, Gray, and another Black. They're not crazy pigmented but they'll work. They're also really smooth and creamy, no pulling or tugging. I also love how big they are!

The eyeshadows, which were the reason I even looked twice this package. I did very quick finger swatches that I don't have a picture of, but I can tell you these aren't terribly pigmented. But, my Sephora eyeshadow primer will be with me to solve those problems. My favorite thing about these three palettes is the packaging. They each ave a mirror, they close very tightly and take some force to open....I found this really surprising for the price. They'll be great for travel! Also, imagine these much brighter, and anything that looks blue is actually purple.

Here are the lipsticks. They're really pigmented and creamy. The pink is a true fuschia I'd say, and the other one is a weird mauve/champagne frost. I like these (well, the pink)!

The blush/lipgloss palettes. I wasn't crazy about the possibility of getting powder blush all over the lipglosses, but I'll deal. I really like the color selection in these as well. I wore a blush yesterday and it was 75% missing after three hours, but I didn't set it so that might be why. I'm not crazy about blush anyway so it's not a big deal to me. I do have to admit I'll miss my dear Benefit Sugarbomb, but I'm so afraid to ruin it. Also, all of these are much brighter in real life. Those purple and pink glosses in the top picture are almost neon! I didn't have time to edit these because it's almost not Friday anymore!

I didn't photograph the nail polish, but they're a standard red, fuschia, dusty pink cream, and pink shimmer. If anyone wants pictures I can do that.


So this is most of the makeup I'll be traveling with. For $10, I won't care if it gets broken or cracked. I won't mind if I accidentally leave it in a hotel or lose it in transit. I'll also be able to buy makeup there if this stuff isn't doing it for me, so I'm not too worried. It is completely worth the price.

The other makeup I'm bringing is my Ulta Extreme Wear Mousse Foundation in Pure Beige (love this stuff), a tinted moisturizer (Ulta brand unless I find another one somewhere), Ulta Amped Lashes Mascara (again, unless I find another), my setting powder, colored liners, and concealer (also Ulta brand....see a pattern?), and a bunch of lip products including Wet n Wild tinted lipbalm and lipstick, Ulta brand gloss, my MAC Sonoran Rain and Caqui, and probably some others. Wow, that sounds like a lot....maybe I'll cut down =P

I will mention that CVS carried another kit like this from The Color Workshop. It had the same eyeshadow colors in the same arrangements (only in my kit, the shadows have circle stamps on them and in the other kit the shadows had no print on them), but it had 2 palettes with 2 blushes each, 4 lipsticks instead of 2, and the eyeliners were actual pencils (is that called kohl liners?) instead of the creamy pencils. Oh, and the nail polishes in the other kit were stout and round and the ones in mine had flat, squoval-shaped bottles.

So what makeup do you bring when you travel? Five weeks is a long trip, so I think I'm bringing more variety than I would on vacation. Also, I'm blanking on what nail polishes to bring. I seriously might go grab a bunch of Wet n Wilds and NYC polishes in case they break. =P

Would you buy this kit? Have you already? Let me know! Thanks for reading!

Janna

My Go-Between

Hello!

For this Pink Wednesday, I'm going to show you something very subtle. Yesterday, I posed this question on Twitter (follow me! @cleverncolorful) and I don't think I made any sense. This was the question:


do you have a color that you throw on when you need a between mani polish? does that make sense?


Yeah, bunch of gibberish. What I meant was: is there a polish that you can throw on between manicures if you have to leave the house, just so you don't leave with naked nails? I get so nervous with just 140 characters to use =P

When I took my glittertastic fourth of July manicure off, my nails were, obviously, naked, and my mom took that moment to ask me if I wanted to run to the store with her. My nails were so stained, so I threw this on my nails until I had time to do a full manicure. Here it is:

This is supposed to serve as a "my nails but better" look. I literally slapped on a coat of an old Sally Hansen pink glass fleck, and swiped over my tips with Rimmel Insolence, a white/silver fleck. This was only going to be worn for an hour or so, but I'm still wearing it a day and a half later....

Oh well. So now, let me re-ask this, now that I have more characters to work with....

Do you have a go-between mani?

Thanks for reading!

Janna

The Evolution of My July 4th Mani!

Good afternoon!

So I'm about to take this mani off, but I keep putting it off since I have about 9 layers of polish and some serious glitter on my nails and I know it's going to be awful. Here's how my Fourth of July mani evolved!

First, I painted my nails with two coats of Revlon Plum Baby, a mauve/purple cream. I didn't take a picture of this alone; I only intended it to be the base for the next polish I used. Next, I used three or four thick coats of Icing Bird of Paradise on top of the Revlon. Bird of Paradise is a wine-colored jelly with a ton of iridescent glitter. I wore it like this for about 5 days:

Revlon Plum Baby topped with Icing Bird of Paradise

I did like this even though the color is a little tame for my taste, but the glitter kept it interesting.

Then, I was going into NYC and wanted more sparkle, so this mani was topped off with two coats of Cover Girl City Lights, which is your typical silver holo topper. No picture of this, but you get the idea.

This past Saturday, I wanted red, and since I was dreading taking this off, I layered one medium coat of China Glaze Phat Santa, a red, I guess, jelly, over it, just to see how it would look. I ended up LOVING it, so this was the next stage of my mani =]

The glitter shows beautifully under the red. I guess you can say this is my "half sandwich" manicure.

And yesterday was the fourth of July, so I decided to incorporate some nail art onto this red, even though I didn't really go anywhere celebrate. On accent nails, I painted half my nail on the diagonal with China Glaze First Mate, a gorgeous navy cream. I also got out my stamping plates and used BM21 (many stars and swirls) and BM05 (the big star) along with Design-a-Nail polish in Frostbite, a plain white. I actually really love the result, even though it took all of 3 minutes and came out a bit sloppy. It served its purpose. After that, I topped with one coat of an old Wet n Wild 413, which is just a clear polish with very fine silver glitter. Here's the final mani!

So, yeah, all in all, I think there are about 10 coats of polish on my nails, lol! But I got absolutely no chipping throughout the whole week or more I've been wearing it. Pretty impressive! Oh well, time to take it off now!

Do you ever "recycle" manis like I did? Or keep layering until your end result is completely different from your first mani? I ended up really liking how drastic the change was despite the thickness!

Thanks so much for reading!
Janna

I Need Guest Bloggers! And Help from Spanish Beauties!

Hey everyone!

As you may or may not know, I will be studying abroad in Barcelona, Madrid, and Santiago, Spain from July 10th to August 13th. I will try to post occasionally while I'm gone, but I'm going to need your help with posting while I'm away for 5 weeks. So, if any of you would like to help me out and guest post, I'd really reallyyyy appreciate it! You can write up a post, email it to me (paradise423 at gmail dot com), and I will paste it into my blog and schedule it for posting while I'm away. Once I decide, I'll let you know when your post will appear on my blog. So send me your beauty posts! It's also a good way to advertise for your blog. =]

Also, I have to pack for 5 weeks of Spanish living. I'm so excited, but would like some information from anyone that lives in or has visited beautiful España. What is the weather like? What polishes should I look out for? =P If you think of anything else I may need to know about going there (besides Spanish, that's what I'll be studying =]), I would love to hear it!


So, finally, thanks for reading! And please send me your guest posts! =] More nails coming up!


Janna

Long Overdue Giveaway Winner!

Hello!

Here's a short post to announce the winner of my Long Overdue Giveaway! I had 41 entrants and over 118 entries in all! Thank you all so much for entering! You made my birthday/first year blogoversary/150 follower celebration so enjoyable.


So without any delay, the winner of the Long Overdue Giveaway is...

ERIKA!

Erika is the mastermind behind Ice Queen's Nail Parlour, one of the first blogs I started following and one of my favorites. Be sure to check it out if you haven't already, and enter the giveaway that she's having right now!

Sorry to all of you who didn't win, but there will definitely be more giveaways! Be sure to follow me on twitter as well (@cleverncolorful) because I'm also thinking about doing twitter giveaways.

That's it for now! Thank you, as always, for reading, following, and supporting my habit.

Janna

Face Paint Friday - Wet n Wild Mega Eyes

Hello everyone!

I decided to start an installment on my blog called Face Paint Friday. Before I go on, I wanted to point out that I thought of this idea without seeing it anywhere else, and I am unaware that something called Face Paint Friday exists elsewhere. If you know of another blog/site/anything that uses "Face Paint Friday," please let me know and understand that this is an unintentional coincidence.

Every Friday, if I post on a Friday (not sure that it'll be every week), I'll make posts regarding different makeup products instead of the usual nail posts. These posts could range from an eyeshadow look to a face primer review to a new favorite lipgloss or my top makeup products of the moment.

Please let me know what you think of this idea, and if you'd like to start posting your makeup looks on Friday also, feel free! I've been getting more and more into makeup since I've discovered the blogging world (you're enablers, all of you!), and it's so much fun to paint myself up. =D

So for this week's installment, I'm going to show you a green eyeshadow palette that I bought from Wet n Wild almost 5 years ago, so it might not look familiar. It's called Amazon Greens. I think the Wet n Wild Mega Eyes trios have been discontinued, but at the time of this post there are very reasonably-priced listings on eBay. Here's a picture of the trio:

I love the mirror on the side. For reference, these trios are exactly the same size as the current trios.

Here are some pictures of the look I did.
























To create this look, I used the pale green shade on the inner corner, the brown shade in the middle and the dark green shade on the outer corner.

Taking eye pictures is so hard! I give all of you beauty bloggers major credit. Any tips for a girl with a simple camera on how to take better eye makeup pictures? My "macro" setting is just a Close Up setting that is designed to shoot from 28 inches, which isn't a close-up shot if you ask me.

I will say that these are brighter in person, even though I did edit them a bit to try and bring out the color. It reminded me of the makeup version of Chanel Peridot, gold to green. See, I added a nail polish reference in there somewhere!


I added a quick poll in this post because I know most of us read through a reader. I'd really appreciate your feedback!

What do you think about Face Paint Friday?
	I think it's a great idea and I want to participate, too!
	I think it's a good idea and like reading through makeup posts as much as nail posts.
	I don't mind it, but I prefer nail posts.
	It doesn't interest me at all.
	Other - I'll explain in the comments.
pollcode.com free polls

That's it for now! What do you think? Thanks for reading!!

Janna