Italian Manicure!

Hello! Sorry that my absence was longer than I thought! I was burnt out from volunteering and took a couple days to do literally nothing.

Today I have for you a special holiday manicure! The reason I was volunteering last week is because my town has a very long-running (137 years, to be exact) festival to celebrate the feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel. Taken from the Mt. Carmel Society webpage, the Mt. Carmel Society, who organizes the week-long festival, "is an independent nonprofit Catholic Organization formed in 1875 by Italian immigrants new to Hammonton, New Jersey, who took time to celebrate their safe journey to America and a successful harvest by giving praise and thanks to the blessed Virgin Mary." The 16th of July, the Feast Day of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, is regarded as a holiday like any other; for example,school and town offices have off!

Since this festival is deeply rooted in Italian tradition and I myself am Italian-American, I did a festive manicure! Lots of layering was involved for this. All red areas are two coats of OPI Color So Hot it Berns with one coat of OPI Animalistic on top. Green areas are two coats of Orly Wandering Vine topped with both China Glaze Glittering Garland and Zoya Ivanka. The white is a no-name white cream topped with Orly Winter Wonderland. Here's the result:

This was a fun manicure and I got a lot of compliments! I hope you all like it as much as I do =] Are there any Mt. Carmel festivals near you? I know there is at least one other in New Jersey.

Thank you so much for reading! Let me know what you think!

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

Back-to-School Haulage

Hello!

The hurricane is coming! I'm in southern New Jersey and it has been raining since about 10 AM. Luckily I still have my power, though!

Sorry I kind of ran out of manicures for a bit so I'm due for a long swatching session. Fortunately I have so many new goodies to play with! Wanna see? Sure you do!

First, the two most recent Serena sets. I bought the red and gold one first, since the purple was sold out at my Ulta and I couldn't NOT buy a Serena set since I play tennis, but I went back to make my last Ulta trip yesterday and they restocked Grape...Set...Match! My lucky day =]

L to R from top: Pros & Bronze, Love is a Racket, Grape...Set...Match and Servin' Up Sparkle.

Here are my two picks from the Miss Universe collection, which also randomly showed up at my Ulta yesterday. I was just there two days before but yesterday there were SO many new things and everything was restocked. I chose It's MY Year, because it was so much prettier in person than I expected, and Swimsuit...Nailed It! Fun fact: my boyfriend actually LOVED that blue.

Oh, and has anyone else seen OPI caps stamped with numbers? This is the first time I have.


Next are my Orly Birds of a Feather picks. I went out originally just wanting Fowl Play, like the rest of the world, but Sea Gurl stuck out to me for some reason as well, so I also got that one. I loved Peachy Parrot too, and actually the whole collection =P Maybe someday I'll get the rest.

Here's what I've recently grabbed from Sally's: China Glaze Trendsetter (I'll probably get more Metros in the future) and Finger Paints Cordur-Orange. I also got a One 'n' Only Argan 1.25" Curling Iron. I mentioned this on Twitter, but when I asked the woman working at Sally's if the Metros were in, she said they were in the back, but she wasn't allowed to put them out until September for some sort of promotion? But she asked if I wanted to see them and told me I could buy the ones I wanted...weird! The saleswoman got to Midtown Magic before I could, though!

This picture shows both polishes much more color-accurately.

Now I can show you these glitters I got in Spain! These are all chunky glitters that I got from an Asian Bazaar for 1 euro each. They are full of chemical goodness. They don't have names, but from left to right, it's a lilac circular glitter, a white/iridescent circular glitter, and a BLACK! circular glitter. Besides the large circular glitter, each polish has tiny glitter of the same color. I wore the black one in Spain, and application was typical for a chunky glitter: annoying and all of the glitter came to my nail tip. But they're pretty cool nonetheless.

And last but not least, MY GLITTER GAL HOLOS! These just came today and I'm already in love. I ordered them from llarowe and shipping was only $2.22. It's great that when polishes are already so much, you don't have to pay an arm and a leg for shipping as well. Super fast shipping and I highly recommend her site! I got Red, Marine Blue, and Dark Purple.

DO YOU SEE THIS RIGHT NOW?!

So, yeah....my stash has absolutely doubled this summer. At least. Sigh. I hate it, but I love it. This isn't even close to all that I've bought.

Oh, yeah, when my Ulta restocked, I noticed a brand new display with a white shimmery polish, a red (typical), and base and top coat. The tag on the bottles noted that some of the proceeds from sales go to a charity. The name of the white I can't remember but it had "man-i" in it, and the red was "Red-y to Help." Has anyone else seen it? I took a cell phone pic but it will not send to my email.

Did you grab any of the polishes I did? I love fall collections. And now I'm definitely all set for school! Thank you so much for reading =]

Janna

How I Got Over Polish Withdrawl

Hello!

How are all of you today? Feel free to leave a comment letting me know! I'd love to talk to you guys more =]

So today I have one of my favorite manicures of late. I brought like 6 polishes with me to Spain, and I was getting plain SICK of them and couldn't wait to get home just to get back to my full stash. So as soon as I got home, I put on this one =]

First we have two coats of Orly It's Up to Blue. I really like this polish and it had awesome opacity. It even matches my cell phone! =]

And since I was craving some sort of nail art, I pulled out my brand new China Glaze Cracked Medallion. It cracked really really well! For those of you who are interested, I painted it on very thick and made a ton of brushstrokes to get this pattern. Check out the awesome color combination!

So what do you think? I needed this mani to get over my polish slump! =P

Thanks so much for reading,

Janna

More Water Marbling, Family Style

Hello!

How is everyone doing today? I just wanted to preface this post by saying that I'll be spending Tuesday night to Wednesday night in New York City! It's the first time I'm going without being on a field trip!

Also, I'll be picking my giveaway winner on Thursday when I return. I cannot wait! Thank you for your patience! =]

So my last post was about my MAC Hint Of Sapphire water marble. The day before I did that water marble, I did my sister's nails and some of my mother's nails in a water marble design as well. Today, I'm going to show you my sister's design.

This was an extra special design because my sister graduated high school on Monday, and I did this design for her on Sunday night. So congrats to her!

For her marble, I used Color Club Age of Aquarius, China Glaze Spontaneous, OPI Ink, and Orly It's Up to Blue. It was a pretty combination =] Take a look! EDIT: Forgot to mention I topped them with Cover Girl City Lights, a holo topper.

left.


right.

What do you think? Have I inspired you to try a water marble yet? =] To all my new followers, look HERE to see how to do it!

Thank you for reading!

Janna

Haulage Part I - Happy Birthday to Me!

Hello again!

My 20th birthday was April 23rd and I just wanted to show you what I bought or received on that day. Onto the pictures!!



These lovelies were a thoughtful gift from my boyfriend.



From left to right these polishes are Orly Rose-Colored Glasses, Orly It's Up To Blue, Orly Rose Radiance, Sally Hansen Extreme Wear in Sunkissed (wearing now), SH Extreme Wear in Blue It, and Ulta Under the Sea Mini Set, which I'd been DYING to get, and I didn't even tell him. The polishes in the set are Tip the Scales, A Tail of Two Cities, Mermaid in Heaven, and Don't Be Shellfish.

Next I hit up Sephora and I got my free Beauty Insider birthday gift and bought a discounted polish. After that, I was headed to Ulta, where the polishes were buy 2, get one free.



To the left is philosophy's Happy Birthday, Beautiful! shampoo, shower gel & bubble bath, which is vanilla birthday cake scented. This was my free birthday gift, and it's a 6 oz. bottle, which I thought was really nice for a free gift! The polish is Sephora by OPI Rumba Romance. The two OPIs I got at Ulta are San Tan-tonio and Señorita Rose-alita. The 3rd polish I got was Big Hair. . .Big Nails, but I gave this to one of my close friends who has big curly hair. Lol.

Finally, I bought myself a very special birthday present at Nordstrom. . .I've never even been inside a Nordstrom before I don't think. I'm sure you can guess what I bought!







The saleswoman said they just got this in! MINI Deborah Lippmanns. From left to right: Bad Romance, Happy Birthday, Across the Universe. In love! I paid $30 for this if anyone is interested.

All in all, my birthday was amazing and I want to thank everyone who was a part of it! And thank YOU so much for reading!

Janna

Beauty-full Gifts

Helloooo!

Another Christmas-related post...these are some gifts I generously received for Christmas!






My first NARS polishes =] Drop Dead Gorgeous Set. (Arabesque, Chinatown, Saratoga, Candy Darling)



OPI Set: Tease-y Does It, Sparkle-iscious, Body Shimmer



OPI Set: Tiny Black Purse, Color So Hot It Berns, Lucerne-tainly Look Marvelous. Gift from my boyfriend's mom along with a $25 Ulta Giftcard. (Yes, I already had LLM, but now I have one for you guys =] Slowly compiling a giveaway...)



OPI Set: Bring On The Bling!, Rising Star, gold bag




Crystal Nail File adorned with Swarovski crystals =] came in that cute case!


Orly Winter Wonderland




MAC Makeup set. My first MAC products EVER. Adorable bag including Teal Pigment, Mascara, Gel Liner and brush, and I also received a lustreglass =] from my boyfriend's brother.

There you have it =] A very successful Christmas. I'm so thankful for everything in my life!

Thanks for reading. I'm almost at 100 followers! I'm overwhelmed.

Janna

My Teeny Tiny Orly Collection

Long time no see!

Sorry for my small leave of absence...it's now Sunday afternoon and my last post without scheduling was Wednesday night.

I went on vacation this weekend. Not far, just down the shore, and I had expected to do some posts when I got there, but there was no internet in my hotel. NO INTERNET!!! It's 2010 people; we should be getting internet on every street corner by now! Blasphemy. I was really disappointed that I couldn't post or read all of your new posts.

I had scheduled my Jade is the New Black post to go up Thursday night, so at least you got to see that. I'm still wearing that color, and I got compliments from strangers while I was away =] It lasted from Wednesday til today pretty well. It's weird though, because I have very little tipwear, but many of my nails have small chips...not really sure how that works.

So maybe this will make up for me being MIA (I'm making a huge deal out of being gone for 3 days, lol). I only have two bottles of Orly polish, Royal Navy, which I bought after seeing gorgeous swatches on blogs, and one called Terracotta, which I bought years ago, before I'd even heard of the brand, because it was pretty =]

Here is glorious Royal Navy:







I believe this was 3 coats? The base is kinda jelly-ish. This is a darker royal blue (not quite navy) color, with some teal shimmer in it. Look at those flash pictures! So pretty.

And here's Terracotta:




Definitely no cleanup going on here...>.<



2 coats, cream finish.

Yeah, I know...you're all looking at that last picture going, JANNA, YOU MESSED UP THE SWATCHES. THAT'S NOT THE SAME COLOR. But alas, it is. I'm not sure why the no flash vs. flash pictures turned out sooooo different. My advice for that last picture is, at least for my laptop, to lower (not tilt) your head so that you're looking up at the picture; it looks way more red that way, more true to the actual color. For some reason my camera picked up a TON of pink. Sorry.

Here's a good picture of what I think this color looks like, since the first pictures are too orange to be accurate.


My favorite flower =]

It's hard for me to describe...it's red, but kinda orange, leans a little pink....warm, but soft...

If you have any suggestions on how to describe this let me know. =p

There you have it! Until next time,

Janna

PS. Thank you to all my new (and old =]) followers!