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

BCA / DA Manicure - finally!

Hey everyone!

Again, I was MIA for a bit there. Sorry about that! I went to my first Broadway show last night =] In The Heights! It was amazing =]

Onto this manicure. I did this like...almost 3 weeks ago. Oops. This was inspired by this post by Deez Nails. I had the same problem with Sally Hansen Lime Lights...It's so sheer. Here it is at 4 coats (no base or topcoat):



So...yeah. Here's my combined Breast Cancer and Depression Awareness mani! Two coats of CoverGirl Megawatt Mauve topped with one coat of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Lime Lights:


Megawatt Mauve on its own. These pictures make it look more melon-pink colored. But in real life it's a deep mauve-pink.


Again by itself. More color-accurate.


With Lime Lights! I love that subtle (or not-so-subtle) green shimmer.


Anyone else think my nails look like candy? Is that just me? ......**crickets chirping**


So pretty!

So yeah, that my combined Breast Cancer (pink) and Depression (green) manicure. What do you think?

Thanks for reading!

Janna

Major Hauling

Hello everyone!

This weekend has been full of shopping, and here are some pictures of what I snagged =]

On Friday I went to KMart and a Family Dollar store in the area.

Family Dollar:

Everything is L.A. Colors
First row: Nail art deco in white and silver glitter, Perfect Lash Mascara and Auto Eyeliner, both in black
Bottom row: Base/Topcoat and Perfect Pair polishes in "Paradise."

Everything was a dollar except the mascara (which was $2) =] and if I had known what I would find in KMart I would have skipped the topcoat...

KMart:

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Marine Scene and Lime Lights, both with a free clear polish (for less than the price of the polish by itself), CoverGirl Boundless Color in City Lights (holo topcoat), Rimmel 60 Seconds in Zeitgeist, and NYC polish in Big Money Frost.

So now I have 4 Xtreme Wear polishes, two are green and two are blue, and a boatload of clear polish. I had to dig to the bottom of a sale basket to find the Rimmel polish, and apparently it's discontinued. It's a very pretty duochrome of fuschia to green/gold =]

The madness continued the next day when I went to the mall and to Sally's. . .

I got my first Icing polishes and some eyeshadows:

Matte polish in Chase Me, Copper with holo glitter called Paparazzi, Safari Eyeshadow Kit and a 10 shadow palette

Here are the shadows opened:


Both of these were 10 dollars and the colors in them are gorgeous =] (Plus, the store gets bonus points because the girl at the checkout complimented my rainbow water marble nails!)

The rest of my trip:


e.l.f. liquid eyeliner in black, Claire's Mood polish in Calm/Wild and Peaceful/Confident, and an old Revlon Dark Pleasures polish, 780 Talk Dirty.

And finally, I stopped at Sally's:

Top (all China Glaze): Golden Enchantment, Kiwi Cool-ada, and Yellow Polka Dot Bikini
Bottom: Gelous Nail Gel Coat, Seche Vite topcoat (my first!), and Orly Royal Navy.
I also picked up a crystal nail file by A.S.P.

The CGs were on sale for $1.99. ONE DOLLAR AND 99 CENTS PEOPLE!!! Go get them while you can! I could totally live with being a season behind if that means getting polishes more than half off. Kiwi Cool-ada was my favorite from the Poolside Collection, and now it's mine =]

So that's it! Sorry for the obnoxiously long post, but I got a bunch of goodies =]

Thanks for reading,

Janna