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

Random Manicures - The Sequel

Hello everybody!

Hope you all are having an enjoyable week. Sorry for that lame excuse for a post I left you a couple days ago, but I feel so bad that I don't have a lot of time to post. I am in the 8th week of my Spring semester, which means I'm pretty much exactly at the midpoint. Mid-semester is always the busiest time, excluding finals, so I'm trying really hard to keep up with my school and work commitments, and sometimes blogging gets pushed aside unfortunately. Friday starts my Spring Break though, so I'll definitely have more time to do some swatching and posting! =] You can look forward to seeing some of the SOPI Glee polishes (if they ever arrive in the mail), my 3 free Zoyas, some Viva La Nails decals and accessories, and some e.l.f. cosmetics, all of which have been sitting in my house waiting for me to get home.

That's my little song and dance. =P I'm sure I've told you something similar before, but it's true. Onto the pictures!

These are all manis I've had on my computer since fall semester. I did find my memory card though, so hopefully I can get some more recent pictures up soon.

This is one of my favorite manis ever and I got so many compliments and questions about it. It's really simple - NYC Skin Tight Denim Creme, and after two or three days, I topped it with one coat of Essie Matte About You. No shiny pictures, sorry, just matte ones. When I first discovered the nail blogging world, seeing pictures of Russian Navy Matte drove me crazy, so I bought Skin Tight Denim Creme specifically to be used with Essie MAY and recreate the look =p. I loveeee this!









The NYC polish is just two coats (could get away with one), formula was great, and at 99 cents, it's a great way to fulfill a lemming.

Moving right along, next up is Pure Ice Iced Copper, an orange-leaning copper polish with a finish between shimmer and metallic. I bought this to fill the copper polish hole in my collection, and this one is really really pretty. Two, maybe three coats? I really like Pure Ice polishes! (Sorry for the one lonesome picture!)




And next is China Glaze Ingrid. Holy crap, my nails are so long. They actually look fake. Ahem, anyway. The first couple pictures are the only ones that are color accurate. In the last two, the color is pulling oddly green. Hm. But I believe this was three coats. Taupe/brown with pretty gold shimmer.











HOW RIDICULOUS do they look?! I don't think I could grow them that long, especially in this weather, even if I tried.


And finally, since I noticed how long my nails had gotten when I was wearing Ingrid, I pulled out Claire's Calm/Wild, because I figured the color change would be very obvious on my long nails. This is three coats, and since my hands are cold all the time, the polish most of the time was a uniform magenta color, but after I washed my hands the color change would be very apparent for a few minutes.


Midpoint color.


"Warm" color.



Ditto.


"Cold" color!



Midpoint.



Midpoint. Flash.



Midpoint.


Thank you so much for reading! You guys are amazing!

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

Random October Manis

Helloooo. Finals are overrrr and I'm home!

How's everyone?! What have I missed?!

Well, I do know a lot of things I've missed, and I definitely missed showing you my October manis! Let the madness begin!





Milani Hi-Tech. I painted my nails this color for Depression Awareness. Amazing green holo! 3 coats I believe.

Next, one of my favorite manis of all time. This is Polar Bare from the Sally Hansen Salon Manicure line. I bought this thinking it was a stark white, but it's actually a jelly, sheer white. I hated it at first and was going to return it, until I realized that just one coat made my nails look really clean and fresh. Here it is with 4 coats:





After a couple of days, I stamped it with BM plate 21 and Design-a-Nail polish in Voodoo. How amazing is this?! I got so many compliments each day I wore it, even from one of my professors!







Finally, my Halloween mani! I kept it simple for this one: 3 (I believe) coats of an unnamed Color Club obnoxiously-neon orange. If anyone has any idea what this is, let me know! I posted this in one of my haul posts, and it might be Wham! Pow! from their Spring '10 collection (EDIT: actually it's more likely to be Orange Revenge!).





That's all for now! Thanks for reading!


Janna

China Glaze Atlantis

This color is amazing! I ordered it off Amazon (love Amazon!) after seeing some awesome swatches not too long ago, and when it came, the polish looked absolutely amazing in the bottle. It is absolutely PACKED with holo glitter.

Onto the pictures! Warning: there are a LOT.










=]





Yeah, I know, it's amazing. I seriously could not stop looking at my nails. I really considered taking the polish off for my Organic Chemistry exam cause I just kept staring at them while I was studying! But, of course, the polish stayed on. =]

If you couldn't tell, Atlantis is a teal blue jelly with a TON of holo glitter. The jelly is so sheer so you can see right through to all the layers of polish underneath. The effect is awesome. This is 3-4 coats; I did 3 on some and 4 on others =P. You can still see nail line, but you can't really cover it with this polish. Not that I mind at all! It's gorgeous!

Only complaint? Chipped within 2 days =\

Here's another picture that I took while I was doing my manicure. It kinda shows the thickness of coats that you need for this polish. Take a look:



These are all one coat. On the first two fingers, I did a thicker coat. And on the second two, I did how I would usually do a first coat. As I've said before, I usually do very thin coats, but that just doesn't work with this polish. It would take like 6 coats if I kept doing it that thin.

So, do you own Atlantis? I couldn't stop looking at it while it was on, and now I can't stop staring at these pictures! lol! Share your thoughts below!!

Thanks for reading!!

Janna

NOTD: Icing Paparazzi

Hello there =]

I'm posting this much later than I thought I would, but I said you'd see tomorrow so here it is!

Since my poor nails broke on my right hand, I thought Icing Paparazzi would cheer me up, and it definitely worked. I've swatched this color here, but I think I got some better pictures this time around, and these pictures are with base and top coat.

Sorry for wearing this again so soon, but I don't have many glitter polishes. I was going to wear ChG Atlantis, which I've been dying to wear, but the shirt I was wearing out that night was emerald green, and the clash of teal green on my nails would have bothered me =P This is definitely gorgeous though, definitely one of those "going to get into an accident" kind of polishes =P

Onto the pic spam!


Indirect artificial light


Indirect artificial light + flash


...Me hunched over blocking the artificial light?


<3 that glitter.




My new short right hand nails


LOVE this one!

Sorry, couldn't get any two-handed shots since no one is around to take them for me =P Tried to take them by myself once, and it was a huge fail and waste of time.

Shown here is two coats, could have used a third if you're picky, but I think it looks fine with two. This is a rose-toned copper glitter, and there's fine glitter and also a ton of chunky holo glitter in this polish. It is rather thick and you kind of have to glob on the polish, but it wasn't that big of a deal for me. My swatches that I took before (again, seen here) don't really bring out the rose tone, so these pictures are much more color accurate than the swatches I posted before, but in real life the polish is still more rosy than it looks here.

As you can see, in some lights it looks more gold and in some the deep rose copper really stands out, so it's a neutral with a little bit of a pop =]

Oh, and another thing, if you think you see chipping or tipwear on my right hand, it's a lie. I changed my pedi today and the acetone from the felt got onto my tips, taking away the copper color and just leaving the silver glitter. I'll touch those up eventually, but from what I can tell, this polish is pretty long-lasting (BC: Avon adhesive, TC: Seche Vite), and there's not even any tipwear after two full days. Serious achievement if you type as much as I do! Definitely needs TC, and even with it it's really gritty from all the glitter. All in all, I think it's an awesome polish, pretty unique, and it seems to be pretty popular on the blogs. I'm going to keep this on until I have time to change it, since I'm moving into school Friday afternoon and am going to be super busy.

So yeah, if you notice my lack of posting, or posting at all hours of the night, it's cause I'm beginning school very shortly =\ As soon as I get into a routine I'll start posting much more regularly =]

That's all for today! What do you think of Paparazzi? (Love that name!)