China Glaze Surfin' For Boys + Mash m78

Hello there! How's your Monday going? I'm going to take a minute to brag by saying I love being a college student on summer break who slept in today. =] You love me.

So, today I have for you what I consider a staple manicure for all nailheads: the neon/animal print combo manicure. Now, if you know me in real life, you know I'm not one for animal print at all; maybe it's something I've subconsciously rejected since it's so insanely popular with girls my age. It's a little loud for my tastes. But today I was looking at my China Glaze Surfin' For Boys manicure that I did yesterday and was looking to spice it up, so I started digging through my plates and found Mash m78, featuring a leopard/zebra combo stamp.

This is something out of my comfort zone, so I thought, but I love how obnoxious it is and can't stop staring! Stamping polish is Design-a-Nail Voodoo. This is not the best stamping job of my life because 1) I'm super out of practice and 2) I was working with a new stamper and scraper (more on that in a future post). Anyway, check it out:

So I ask you, have you ever done a manicure that you thought would be totally out of your comfort zone but ended up being really awesome? I'll have to find my m57 plate so I can do full on zebra or leopard; hopefully it'll come out of hiding soon! What do you think about this manicure or animal print in general?

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

Some Shameless Self-Promotion and Zoya Isla

Hello!

Okay, first the shamelessness and then the mani. Over at More Nail Polish blog, a contest is going on where each of the participants entered a franken, and now it's up to the blog's followers to vote on a winner! Go check out the gallery of participants! There are some awesome frankens, and if you'd like to help me out, I'm lucky #7, Frankenberry. On the site you can read a description and the recipe I used. If anyone's interested in more pictures, let me know, but I submitted the only perfectly-color-accurate one to the contest =] To vote, you must be a follow of More Nail Polish and fill out the form. Vote #7! =D Here's the link.



Now onto Isla! This is a deep red shimmer from Zoya, and as soon as I saw Scrangie's swatch, I fell in love. This color is amazing in person and I tried my hardest to capture it in photos! Here it goes:








After a couple of days I fauxnaded it with a Mash plate using Design-a-Nail polish in Voodoo. I loved this and got so many compliments!









Thank you for reading!

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

Fauxnad and Family Nails

I have a feeling this is going to be a long post, so here we go.

First off, does anyone remember the Design-a-Nail by Dee? I got it for Christmas from my parents years ago, and I don't even think they make them anymore. It basically was Konad stamping, only you used a machine with it. You pushed down, pulled the piece closer to scrape the excess polish, pushed the stamper down, picked it up, and pushed it directly onto your nail, which sat snugly on top of the curves of the machine. Sounds complicated, I know. I haven't used it in years, but since I've been reading all these blogs, I wanted to try it again, but I just used the plates it came with, the special polishes, scraper and stamper. Turned out my scraper was absolutely useless, and nothing else seemed to work, so I ordered both a scraper and stamper set and the 21 Bundle Monster plates from amazon.com. The plates were $17 and no charge for shipping! I placed the orders on the 21st of July, the stamper arrived on the 24th and the plates, on the 26th.





As soon as I got my new scraper and stamper, but before my new plates came in, I did my mom's nails in 2 coats of Wet and Wild's Wet Shine "Sunny Side Up" with one layer of Savvy in "French White White" as a base. Then I . . . fauxnaded. . . them using a plate from the Design-a-Nail system, 52M, and a Design-a-Nail special polish in "Rage." I love how it looks, and she was excited to be a hand model.







I love it and I think this was my first full manicure I've ever done using any kind of stamping system, and it was so fun! Her nails are soo long, and she actually just trimmed them. I owe my good nail genes to her!

My sister, on the other hand, can't really grow her nails long, so I guess she got my dad's nail genes, lol. Earlier this week I asked her to let me paint her nails in periwinkle, her favorite color. I also got to use my new-ish dotting tool =]

Super blurry for some reason...






And I used. . .

L.A. Colors Color Craze in Static Electricity, An old unnamed Petites polish that's a periwinkle with a purple flash, a Stripe Right in Gold (that's the name, but it's actually one of those amazing colors right between metallic gold and metallic silver), and a dotting tool/nail brush from Sally's.

Of course, this manicure bit the dust the next day when she went to the beach. She polished them again herself and I begged her to let me put some fauxnad on them, but she won't let me yet. Oh well =p

I'm going to end this here to avoid a super long post. Thanks for reading!

Janna