OPI OTTB with Glitter!

Helloo there!

Today I have for you a blue! I always get compliments when I wear blue (I think because it pops against my warm undertones) and it had been a while since I'd worn a great blue polish, so that was the choice for my most recent mani.

The base color here is OPI Ogre the Top Blue from the Spring 2010 Shrek Collection. It's a really saturated bright blue cream. I color corrected this photo so though my hands are red, the polish is pretty accurate.

I loveee creams, so I didn't think I'd have the heart to top this off with a glitter, but once I tried it on my ring finger, I went ahead and did all my nails! This is Nicole by OPI Kendall on the Katwalk, a melange of blue, purple, and green glitter in a sheer blue base. To my eye, the purple and green glitter are slightly larger pieces than the blue, which makes for a really cool textured effect. Pick this one up if you love glitter!

I wish I could do fancy macro shots, but "Close Up" mode just doesn't cut it, so unfortunately I can't do this beauty justice.

That's it for now! What color do you get complimented in? Do you wear that color on your nails?

Thanks for reading!

Janna

Batman-Inspired Nails for Otakon

Hey there!

So I've been quiet for the last couple of days because my mom, sister, and I headed to Baltimore for the weekend. My sister and her friend were going to Otakon, the anime convention that is held there every year, so my mom and I went to enjoy the sights and, of course, the food.

I'll do another post about the things I bought there, but for now I'm going to show you the nail design I created for my sister. She was going to Otakon decked out in all of her Batman apparel: a belt buckle, earrings, converses, shirts (one for each day), a bag, sillybands, arm bands, lanyard ...not to mention all of the other Batman stuff she owns that didn't come with her. Needless to say, she's a huge fan and could talk for hours about any of the movies, TV series, or characters.

So for this weekend, I did a Batman-inspired nail design for her. She didn't want Batman nails, but just nails that were black and yellow.

Here's the recipe:

• Two coats of Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Lightening (which, if you haven't noticed, is my go-to yellow), topped with one coat of Sally Hansen HD in Lite
• To all but the ring fingers, I added one coat of the black glitter I bought in Spain
• A black Stripe-Rite on the ring fingers
• OPI Servin' Up Sparkle

The ring fingers were supposed to be topped with a stamp from Mash plate m72 (the slashed lines image), but of course, I couldn't find my stamper when I was doing this manicure. She was really bummed that she couldn't have the stamped image, but eventually I convinced my sister to let me do a similar-looking design on her ring fingers with a nail art polish. I think it turned out pretty good! Then I topped the design with OPI Servin' Up Sparkle.

NANA NANA NANA NANA BATMAN

So, what do you think? I really liked how they came out and she got a ton of compliments at the convention. Are you a Batman fan?

Thanks for reading!!

Janna

Rainbow Glitter!

Hey everyone! This is a quick post because I'm going with my boyfriend's brother to his college orientation tomorrow! Here's one from the vault. The bright lime green polish is from Icing and since I'm not home, I don't have the name handy. (EDIT: It's Icing's Absinthe.) But you wouldn't want this polish anyway; it was streaky and sheer. It's topped with OPI Rainbow Connection though, so that makes it better.

That's all for now. Sorry for the short post! Thanks for reading!

Janna

My Take on: The Ever-Popular Gradient!

Hello!

How's everyone been? So since I was so behind on my blog-reading, I only-recently came across the wave of gradient manicures that swept the blogosphere, so I had to try it.

For this manicure, I started with a coat of Sally Hansen No Hard Feelings, a really pretty lilac that was opaque and actually vibrant enough for me without looking washed out or almost-white. On top of that, I took a regular kitchen sponge and painted one "strip" of OPI No Room for the Blues (blue), then under that a strip of No Hard Feelings (lilac), and finallly a strip of Zoya Whitney (pink) directly onto the sponge, so it differs slightly from the technique of painting the colors onto a piece of plastic and swirling (I originally tried that but my sponge wouldn't pick up the color from the plastic baggie!).

Then I went crazy on my nails, sponging onto each one with No Room for the Blues near the tip and Whitney nearest the cuticle. I made sure to move the sponge up and down to create a more gradual fade, and I ended up doing two coats of sponging. These are also topped with a coat of Cover Girl Night Lights to smooth/distract from the lines. Check it out!

For some reason, I could not get this to turn out normal. Don't judge.

 I really loved this manicure and kept getting a ton of compliments over Memorial Day Weekend. Someone even asked, "How do you ask them to do them like that?!" thinking I had them done at a salon, and my boyfriend grabbed my hands (without being provoked) and told me they looked really cool, which we know are like two of the best compliments ever.

Oh, and don't mind my amateur watermark. I like watermarks on pictures because as I'm reading through Google Reader, I can remember whose post is whose as I read. There's also the added benefit of actually getting credit for your photos, but whatever. Let me know if you have any suggestions for it! I just did it very quickly whilst playing around on Gimp.

So that's it for now. Are you tired of seeing gradient manis? I'm going to do my best to do more nail art for you all while I have time!

Thanks for reading!

Janna

Pure Ice Siren with ChG Ring in the Red

Hello!

It has been a while, hasn't it? My semester is off to a super fast start, but I'm loving every minute of being busy. I've also had some pretty great manicures this semester so far.

Here's a manicure that I did at the end of winter break that lasted until the first week of school. It's a Pure Ice red cream, which I borrowed from my sister, and it had no label, but after some research I'm assuming it's Siren. On top of that I added Ring in the Red from China Glaze's Holiday 2011 Collection. I'm pretty much obsessed with this glitter. I wanted to wear it on its own but I wasn't sure how many coats I need, so I used one of the Pure Ice first, then added two of the glitter. I didn't get to take pictures until about five days after I did these, so sorry for any tipwear or chips you may notice!

I love the different-sized glitter in this polish! It's so much fun to look at and creates such a cool effect. It's definitely a warmer-red glitter, and my pictures photographed near orange-red, so imagine these a bit more of a true red than they look! These are topped with 2 coats of Out the Door topcoat.

Enjoy!

Meep! That's one ugly chip.

As always, thanks for reading and following!

Janna

Christmas Mani 2011

Hello!

Today I have a my manicure from Christmas, about two weeks late. I apologize in advance for the quality of these; they were the first shots I took with my new camera I got for Christmas. I had an older Kodak Easyshare and now I have a newer one....actually, two new ones because both Santa and my boyfriend got me two different Kodak Easyshares. I'll have to figure out what I'm going to do about that!

My mani for Christmas Eve was China Glaze Jolly Holly with accent nails of Orly Winter Wonderland. For Christmas Day I added a coat of China Glaze Party Hearty. I didn't get to take pictures without PH though. So yeah, this Christmas manicure is exclusively Holiday 2010 polishes. I liked it; it was festive enough.

The background here is my living room. I snapped this one in a last-ditch effort to get a clear shot
and it was my clearest one so I included it even though the background is funky.

Blurryyyy.

WW brought out the blue undertones in JH, which was pretty interesting. I should use that polish to layer more often but it's almost too opaque for that!

What do you think about my manicure? Is it "so last year?" I say these are pretty much classics in my book!

Thanks for reading!

Janna

Autism Awareness Day

http://www.lightitupblue.org/

Hey everyone. Today I'm going to be showing pictures of a blue mani (which I did a while back) in honor of World Autism Awareness Day which is today, April 2nd! I'm happy to see other bloggers supporting this cause as well!

Onto the pictures!

This is OPI's No Room for the Blues, a medium blue cream that I just love. It went on like a dream and I believe this is two coats, but I might have done a third. The accent nail is topped with one coat of Sephora by OPI Traffic Stopper Copper, which I tested on my ring nails and then decided to buy a full bottle! =P









What's your favorite blue polish?

Janna

Sephora by OPI - 212 and a Poll

Hey guys! Happy Groundhog Day =P

I <3 being a chemistry major....not. =] Anyway, I hope all is well out there. Here are some pictures of a polish I picked up in...early January I think. I loved the mix of holo glitter and flakies, and when I got home and looked it up I saw it was LE from LAST holiday season! So here it is, in all its glory, Sephora by OPI 212:







This color was pretty dark for my mood at the time, but I still liked it a lot. I'd describe it as a....charcoal? black? blackened-gold? polish with a mix of holo glitter and flakies. Definitely unique. This was 3 coats, I'm pretty sure.

Anyone have this polish?

One last thing, I added a poll to my blog about how often a blog should post. Please do me a favor and answer it! It's a two part question...for the first question answer either 1, 2, 3, or 4, and for the second, answer 5 or 6. (EDIT: Please answer both parts! You are allowed to select both answers) If you have any other comments to make, please leave them on a post! =] I'd love to hear your feedback and it is MUCH appreciated =]

Talk to you soon,

Janna

NYE Mani

Happy 1/11/11!

As you know if you follow me on Twitter (@cleverncolorful), I wore China Glaze Turned Up Turquoise for New Years Eve. Then I topped accent nails with one coat of Color Club Untamed Luxury and white and green rhinestones.

I think it was like 4-5 coats of TUT, but it dries super fast so it's not an issue. I lovee the ChG neons so much. It's a CRAZY bright blue/green with gorgeous shimmer, dries matte. This color is super-flattering. Untamed Luxury is a glitter that coordinates perfectly with TUT. I used my new Out the Door TC and Gelous BC.

I included a lot of pictures because this color is hard to photograph. I will say that the underwater pictures are most color accurate. Enjoy!






Not SO color accurate.






I thought photographing this polish against blue jeans would make it pull more green, and more color accurate. I was right =]


Least color accurate.

Thank you for reading, and thank you to all my followers!

Janna

Milani One Coat Glitters

Today I have for you the sought-after Milani One-Coat glitter polishes! =]

YAAAY!

I won four of these glitters in a wonderful giveaway from Erin of Never Enough Nails! =] Check out her blog if you don't know it/love it already. These are the four I won:




So of course, I NEEDED Gems, since I love anything multi-colored (my blog background...) and have been lemming Happy Birthday, and I got the purple to complete my collection. I went to FOUR CVSs trying to find these polishes. At the fourth CVS, I found a handful of the polishes sitting on a shelf, no display or anything, but there was two bottles of Purple Gleam and one of Gems. I got one of each:



Swatches (no TC):





Gold Glitz. Fine gold glitter with some darker gold/red/orange glitter thrown in.



Blue Flash.



Silver Dazzle. Blue-leaning Silver glitter.



Purple Gleam. I'd say this is a red-toned purple glitter.



GEMS!!!! Multi-colored glitter of varying sizes. Buying another of these when I see it.

All of these were two coats. Sorry about the one finger swatches, but there are tons more out there and I did not have time to remove all of that glitter. They're really awesome polishes. They're not really just one shade of glitter either; they have varying shades so they're really interesting on the nail.

And no, I didn't forget, here's the last of the Glitter polishes, Red Sparkle. In the last two pictures, it is shown with 2 coats of Out The Door topcoat. My sister is wearing this as a full mani, and it only took the promised one coat to be opaque on her nails. She was excited to be a model:



With TC.



Yep. Looks like Dorothy's slippers alright. Overall these are really good polishes; 2 thin coats make them perfectly opaque and they dry really fast.

Anyone else have these?

Janna