My Go-Between

Hello!

For this Pink Wednesday, I'm going to show you something very subtle. Yesterday, I posed this question on Twitter (follow me! @cleverncolorful) and I don't think I made any sense. This was the question:


do you have a color that you throw on when you need a between mani polish? does that make sense?


Yeah, bunch of gibberish. What I meant was: is there a polish that you can throw on between manicures if you have to leave the house, just so you don't leave with naked nails? I get so nervous with just 140 characters to use =P

When I took my glittertastic fourth of July manicure off, my nails were, obviously, naked, and my mom took that moment to ask me if I wanted to run to the store with her. My nails were so stained, so I threw this on my nails until I had time to do a full manicure. Here it is:

This is supposed to serve as a "my nails but better" look. I literally slapped on a coat of an old Sally Hansen pink glass fleck, and swiped over my tips with Rimmel Insolence, a white/silver fleck. This was only going to be worn for an hour or so, but I'm still wearing it a day and a half later....

Oh well. So now, let me re-ask this, now that I have more characters to work with....

Do you have a go-between mani?

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

I Need Guest Bloggers! And Help from Spanish Beauties!

Hey everyone!

As you may or may not know, I will be studying abroad in Barcelona, Madrid, and Santiago, Spain from July 10th to August 13th. I will try to post occasionally while I'm gone, but I'm going to need your help with posting while I'm away for 5 weeks. So, if any of you would like to help me out and guest post, I'd really reallyyyy appreciate it! You can write up a post, email it to me (paradise423 at gmail dot com), and I will paste it into my blog and schedule it for posting while I'm away. Once I decide, I'll let you know when your post will appear on my blog. So send me your beauty posts! It's also a good way to advertise for your blog. =]

Also, I have to pack for 5 weeks of Spanish living. I'm so excited, but would like some information from anyone that lives in or has visited beautiful España. What is the weather like? What polishes should I look out for? =P If you think of anything else I may need to know about going there (besides Spanish, that's what I'll be studying =]), I would love to hear it!


So, finally, thanks for reading! And please send me your guest posts! =] More nails coming up!


Janna

Long Overdue Giveaway Winner!

Hello!

Here's a short post to announce the winner of my Long Overdue Giveaway! I had 41 entrants and over 118 entries in all! Thank you all so much for entering! You made my birthday/first year blogoversary/150 follower celebration so enjoyable.


So without any delay, the winner of the Long Overdue Giveaway is...

ERIKA!

Erika is the mastermind behind Ice Queen's Nail Parlour, one of the first blogs I started following and one of my favorites. Be sure to check it out if you haven't already, and enter the giveaway that she's having right now!

Sorry to all of you who didn't win, but there will definitely be more giveaways! Be sure to follow me on twitter as well (@cleverncolorful) because I'm also thinking about doing twitter giveaways.

That's it for now! Thank you, as always, for reading, following, and supporting my habit.

Janna

Face Paint Friday - Wet n Wild Mega Eyes

Hello everyone!

I decided to start an installment on my blog called Face Paint Friday. Before I go on, I wanted to point out that I thought of this idea without seeing it anywhere else, and I am unaware that something called Face Paint Friday exists elsewhere. If you know of another blog/site/anything that uses "Face Paint Friday," please let me know and understand that this is an unintentional coincidence.

Every Friday, if I post on a Friday (not sure that it'll be every week), I'll make posts regarding different makeup products instead of the usual nail posts. These posts could range from an eyeshadow look to a face primer review to a new favorite lipgloss or my top makeup products of the moment.

Please let me know what you think of this idea, and if you'd like to start posting your makeup looks on Friday also, feel free! I've been getting more and more into makeup since I've discovered the blogging world (you're enablers, all of you!), and it's so much fun to paint myself up. =D

So for this week's installment, I'm going to show you a green eyeshadow palette that I bought from Wet n Wild almost 5 years ago, so it might not look familiar. It's called Amazon Greens. I think the Wet n Wild Mega Eyes trios have been discontinued, but at the time of this post there are very reasonably-priced listings on eBay. Here's a picture of the trio:

I love the mirror on the side. For reference, these trios are exactly the same size as the current trios.

Here are some pictures of the look I did.
























To create this look, I used the pale green shade on the inner corner, the brown shade in the middle and the dark green shade on the outer corner.

Taking eye pictures is so hard! I give all of you beauty bloggers major credit. Any tips for a girl with a simple camera on how to take better eye makeup pictures? My "macro" setting is just a Close Up setting that is designed to shoot from 28 inches, which isn't a close-up shot if you ask me.

I will say that these are brighter in person, even though I did edit them a bit to try and bring out the color. It reminded me of the makeup version of Chanel Peridot, gold to green. See, I added a nail polish reference in there somewhere!


I added a quick poll in this post because I know most of us read through a reader. I'd really appreciate your feedback!

What do you think about Face Paint Friday?
	I think it's a great idea and I want to participate, too!
	I think it's a good idea and like reading through makeup posts as much as nail posts.
	I don't mind it, but I prefer nail posts.
	It doesn't interest me at all.
	Other - I'll explain in the comments.
pollcode.com free polls

That's it for now! What do you think? Thanks for reading!!

Janna

Pink Wednesday - A Motherly Water Marble

Hi there!

While you read this I am off galavanting in NYC. Sigh =] Or still asleep.

For this week's pink Wednesday, I actually have a pink. Yesterday you saw my sister's graduation water marble, and today I'm going to show you how I did my mom's nails.

My mom showed me a magenta-colored top that she was wearing for my sister's graduation, and OPI Ate Berries in the Canaries was a near-perfect match, so first I painted all of her nails with that. Then I practically had to beg her to let me water marble them...she said she didn't want me to mess them up =P I chose to do a relatively simple design on her because she didn't want her nails as crazy as mine and my sister's.

This is a really simple way to try a water marble if you're a little scared. I only did her thumbs and ring fingers, and they made a really nice accent to her manicure, if I do say so myself =P The accent nails are marbled with Ate Berries in the Canaries and Pamplona Purple (I could have used a clear polish instead of ABITC because her nails were already painted with that color, but I didn't have a clear polish handy). My mom really liked it! =]

This is entitled, "Jan, my arms don't bend that way!!"

I made these pictures extra large so I hope you can see the design. It's pretty subtle but she got a lot of compliments on it =] Every design came out perfect though, so any imperfections you see are the fault of my photography. Maybe next time we'll go bolder...

So what do you think? Does this make you less scared to try a marble? =]

Have a great Wednesday! Thanks 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

MAC Hint of Sapphire-Inspired Water Marble

Hi everybody!

I'm bursting with excitement right now to share this manicure! It's been in my head for weeks and I'm really happy with the way it turned out!

If you keep up with cosmetics, you may already know that MAC's summer collection, due out in July, is called Semi-Precious and will feature mineralize blushes, mineralize skin finishes, cream sheen glasses, and other products. What really caught my attention, however, was the mineralize eyeshadows. (Check out beautezine.com's post of the full press release of the Semi-Precious collection from MAC.)

Now, I don't know too much about MAC and the only MAC products I have were a gift, so I'm not going to pretend I know the difference between a creamsheen glass and a lustreglass (if you know, please share!), but these eyeshadows look just plain gorgeous in the pan. I mean, how could you stand to use them?! The colors swirl together beautifully and compliment each other to a T, and there are some really unique color combinations in this collection.

So when I saw the press release for the Semi-Precious collection on several beauty blogs and I saw the eyeshadows, I was reminded of watermarbled designs for nails. The eyeshadow that stuck out the most to me was Hint of Sapphire. Here's a look:

Image Credit:  beautezine.com.

Seriously beautiful. These things are truly a work of art. So I let my creativity flow and set out to create a water marble that utilized the colors in this particular eyeshadow. MAC describes Hint of Sapphire as a "melange of pink, violet, teal, copper, blue." Respectively, I used Zoya Perrie (even though Zoya describes Perrie as purple), China Glaze Spontaneous, Color Club Age of Aquarius (on loan from my sister), Pure Ice Iced Copper, and Sally Hansen Blue It. The combination is awesome! Take a look =]

Left Hand

Right Hand

Left

Right

My favorite nails:

Left Index

Left Pinky.

Right Ring

Before you can say it, I did go overboard on the pictures. I wanted to do this manicure justice and I think I did =] And pardon my shoddy cleanup job.

The contrast of all these colors really pops on my nails, and in my opinion the copper just makes this look. And, if you're wondering how I did this, click HERE for my tutorial on how to water marble!

I'd like to do another watermarble based on one of the other shadows from this collection, but I'm not sure which one. I was leaning toward another multi-colored one, but do you have a preference? Let me know!

Swatches of this collection are starting to circulate, so tell me, are you getting anything from the Semi-Precious collection? Any eyeshadows? If you are, would you actually use them? =P What do you think of this manicure?

Thanks to Jessica of beautezine.com for letting me use her picture of Hint of Sapphire! =]


Thanks so much for reading!

Janna