Italian Nails

Hi everyone,

I'm not sure if anyone still reads this, but here's a quick post from my smartphone.

This week is the 16th of July which constitutes a big feast in my hometown. In honor of this Italian feast, I of course did my nails. This design was hand painted, but then I went to my local nail salon to have a UV gel topcoat applied. I really should invest in a UV light!

That's it for now. Drop me a comment if you're still reading!

Pillow-Inspired Manicure?

Hey everyone!

Today I have for you some more nail art. Yaaaay!

I asked on Twitter if someone could suggest any nail art ideas for me, and my lovely friend Heather of Let Beauty Blossom told me to do a design inspired by her pillow. I was a little hesitant, but after clicking the photo, I fell in love with the colors and the Moroccan-like design.

Heather's pillow:

So I set out to create this design. I had mostly the right colors (China Glaze Kalahari Kiss would have been nice, but I passed on that one and am going back to buy it!). Here's what I came up with:

I'm sure you can point out the sections that inspired each nail (if you feel like it). Not my most perfect work, but I like it =] Here's what I used:

A dotting tool and nail art brush

Reds: OPI Conquistadorable Color and Bullish on OPI

Oranges: Sally Hansen Sun Kissed and China Glaze Desert Sun

Browns: OPI San Tan-tonio and Essie Little Brown Dress

Gold: A very old Avon Striping Polish

Whitish: Champagne Stripe Rite topped with a no-name sheer white

And my elusive right hand. Thumb to pinky the shades are OPI Conquistadorable Color, Sally Hansen Sun Kissed, China Glaze Desert Sun, OPI CC, and OPI San Tan-tonio. I planned on adding some art to my right hand, but time got away from me and I wanted to get the pictures before the sun set. Besides, I kind of like having an 'accent hand.' Or is that just me making excuses for being lazy?

So that's it for now. Have you ever found inspiration from household items? Special thanks to Heather for the suggestion! Go follow her! And if anyone else has any nail art inspiration for me, please share!

Thanks for reading,

Janna

Olympic Nails!

Hello! Today I have for you a super special manicure. This is my first detailed themed manicure here on Clever and Colorful! 


For this manicure, I used about 15 polishes; the ones you can probably pick out are OPI San Tanio, China Glaze For Audrey, and Zoya Dove. 

Here's some more detail in case you have any questions about polishes or design:
Thumb: Olympic Rings '2012'
            Background is one coat of generic white topped with Sally Hansen Polar Bare and Orly Winter  Wonderland. Rings are all made using Stripe Rite polishes. The 2012 was made using a nail art brush dipped in Barielle Gelt Me to the Party. 
Pointer: Bicycling
            Background is For Audrey, Grass (which was sponged) and Road are both Stripe Rite polishes, person is made with a white Stripe Rite.
Middle: Water Polo

            Background is Dove dotted with virtually every Stripe Rite I own using a dotting tool, which I intended to be the crowd watching. The water is a mix of the blue Stripe Rite and For Audrey. Person, again, is the white SR.

Ring: Big Ben at sunset

         Background is a sponge gradient of SR Yellow, SR Red, and ChG Traffic Jam. The clock tower is San Tan-tonio, Dove, and White SR outlined in the black SR. Birds are also black SR. Lines of Big Ben are the Gold SR.

Pinky: Beach volleyball

          Background is For Audrey, sand is San Tan-tonio. Net and person is white SR, outline is black SR.

The people in my designs are white because I took the Olympic symbols for cycling, water polo, and beach volleyball and inserted them onto a colorful background.

For those of you wondering, my right hand is painted with no detail at all. Thumb and Middle are Zoya Dove (thumb is topped with Orly WW), Pointer and Pinky are For Audrey, and Ring is the same stamping gradient. Just a compliment to the designs on my other hand.

I really hope you like this! It's something I don't usually do, but I was really inspired! What do you think? Are you watching the Olympics?


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

ChG Innocence American/French Mani

LOL. Saw this as an ad on facebook. Thought you guys would appreciate it! What's with this spelling?!

Help spread savvy, colorful nails to your beautiful customers. Start giving mannies and peddies now!

In other news this was one of the best school days I've had in a long time. It was a high of 82 today...which is drastically hot compared to the winterish weather we've been having, and everywhere else has been having as well. I finally could wear flip flops!! I had two canceled classes and got out of my lab almost two hours early! I also got to take two naps! Very painless day, to say the least.

FOUR MORE WEEKS TIL SUMMER!

Just thought I'd share!

I'll leave you with some blurryish pictures of a mani I did a while back. Base is China Glaze Innocence, a sheer pink. Then I created a kind of American or French manicure with freehanded tips in Sally Hansen Polar Bare, a sheer white. I really like how fresh this looked. Hm...maybe I'll recreate this and stamp over it....






Until next time,

Janna<3

Happy Belated Pi Day with Zoya Evangeline!

Hello!

For those of you who may not know, March 14th is an important day in the world of mathematics. Not to mention, it's my mom's birthday!

Pi (π) is defined as the quotient of the circumference of a circle divided by its diameter, which will always come out to 3.141592.... It's an irrational number, so the decimal places never end! So this number, 3.14, translates to 3/14, which is PI DAY!

To celebrate, in high school we used to eat cake, pies, cookies, or any other circular foods. So on Monday, I did a really quick Pi Day manicure!

I started out with three coats of Zoya Evangeline. I got this in the Be a Star mini set with the lip gloss in Starlet. Zoya mini bottles are ADORABLE! The name of this polish will forever remind me of the Princess in the Frog. Anyone else get the reference?

Evangeline is a wine-leaning magenta, meaning this isn't a BRIGHT magenta, but a deeper one, with a ton of gold shimmer. In my opinion, the base color is very very close to that of China Glaze Ahoy! So much so, that I don't plan on purchasing Ahoy anymore. I happened to be at Ulta looking at the Anchors Away collection when I had this on, and my nails nearly matched the Ahoy bottle when I picked it up.

Here is Evangeline alone:





Then I added a bunch of multi-colored pi symbols, π, on my ring fingers and thumbs with random Stripe Rites, Art Club polishes, and Art Deco polishes. On my left thumb, I wrote "3.1415" in a black nail art brush.







I hope you guys like this! I haven't seen another pi day mani, so let me know if you see one on another blog! Hope you enjoyed your math lesson and my geek moment for the day! =D

Janna

NOTD: Zoya LC with Gold/Red Art

Hello!

Tonight I have a short post for you, I hope. I usually say it's going to be short but then end up rambling and rambling.

I did a manicure tonight with some freehanded art, which I used to do so often but I haven't in a while. I've been inspired by a lot of blogs, so I decided to try a different design on each nail, and I really like how it turned out!

The red photographed terribly. Maybe the gold of the nail art threw off my camera? Who knows. I'll post some pictures with flash (they look more red) and some without (those make it look more orange), but the real color is somewhere in between.









Wow...didn't realize how crappy these pictures are, color-wise. Hopefully you get the gist of it; the last one is definitely the closest picture and it's almost true to how it looks in person.

I neglected to take bottle/tool pictures, but I used Zoya's LC from the Gossip collection (find out how I won the Gossip collection in a contest HERE) as the base. Then I drew the gold lines with a champagne/gold Stripe Rite that I got at Sally's. The dots were made using a dotting tool with OPI's Glitzerland from the Fall '10 collection (OPI Fall collection swatches to come!). I used a nail art brush from Icing in Red for some of the accent lines, and the Art Deco striping polishes in Red Glitter for other accent lines. Each nail has half of the accent lines in red, and half in red glitter.

LC, the base color, is in my opinion a summery red cream that has an orange/coral undertone. The pictures don't do it justice - I promise it's cute in person! Sorry about that!

That's it for tonight. Going to go to bed early I think. What do you think of this look?

Janna