The Lite Side of Life: Mani Monday: Circus Circus Mani

Hello amazing peeps! I trust 2013 is treating you beautifully thus far ?!

I decided to let my imagination run wild and wanted to portray an original manicure which represented fun childhood memories of visits to the local circus! I don’t want to say this mani was clown inspired…as clowns seem to incite fear in many! I find this mani to be really upbeat, fun and cheery! My take on what the Circus would be look like on your nails!

I used Revlon Nail Care Calcium Gel Nail Hardener as a basecoat, x3 coats of Essence in Wanna be Your Sunshine as a base colour coat, x1 coat of Essence in Wake Up for nail art, x1 coat Essence Lime Up for nail art, x1 coat Rimmel Heart on Fire for nail art, x1 coat of Essence in Black Up for nail art, x1 coat Bella Cosmetics Nail Polish in Blue and Pink (no official names on bottles) for nail art, x1 coat Revlon in White on White for nail art and Revlon Nail Care ColorStay Gold Standard Top Coat as a top coat.

You will need:

Base coat nail polish
Base colour coat nail polish (I chose yellow)
Three alternating coloured nail polish for the square nail art (I chose orange, red and lime)
Black, blue, white, pink, red nail polish for nail art for the clown’s face. Use colours you have on hand and improvise if you don’t own all colours
Toothpick / orangewood stick (I personally used an orangewood stick)
Nail art stickers with square cut out designs
Top coat nail polish

Method:

1) Apply base coat nail polish to all nails, wait for it to dry completely

2) Apply base colour coat nail polish (yellow) to all nails, wait for it to dry completely

3) Start working on nail art on all nails except accent nails (ring fingers), leave the clown nail art for last. Apply nail art sticker at a diagonal on the nail so the square design runs diagonally on the nail, apply one coat of chosen coloured nail polish and carefully remove sticker immediately. You should be left with a neat diagonally square design on the nail

Your first round of the diagonal square nail art design should look like the orange design

4) Apply the nail art stickers to all nails (except accent nails) on the diagonal and paint on chosen nail polish colours (I alternated the direction of the stickers on every other nail just for an added fun element to the look of the design), I also alternated different colours of nail polish. Wait for nail art to dry

5) You have to wait for all nail art to dry completely before attempting the second round of diagonal square nail art designs

6) While waiting for the first round of square nail art designs to dry you can start working on the clown face for your accent nail

7) Apply white nail polish to your nail in an elongated semi-circle shape. The easiest way to achieve this is to paint a strip of white nail polish down the middle of the nail staring the strip at about 1/3 of the way down the nail. Then paint two shorter strips of white nail polish on either side of the middle white strip. You will then get the desired elongated semi-circle shape, this represents the shape of the clown’s face

8) Now to apply the clown’s hair, pour a small pool of orange nail polish onto a scrap piece of paper and dip the sharp end of an orangewood stick (you can also use a toothpick) into the orange nail polish and carefully on either side at the top of the elongated semi-circle shape draw on some orange hair, it helps to just randomly dot on the orange nail polish in a small cluster on either side of the clowns face…just imagine an almost bald clown with just a few tufts of hair on either side of his head!

9) Now to apply the detail for his eyes, pour a small pool of blue nail polish onto a scrap piece paper and dip the sharp end of an orangewood stick into the nail polish, start by dotting three small dots of blue nail polish in a small triangle shape where the eyes of the clown are going to be. This is going to be the blue eye make up for the clown, once you have placed the three dots in the two triangle shapes by the eyes, fill in the triangle shapes with nail polish so that you have two small solid blue triangles where the eyes should be

10) Now to apply the big red nose, pour a small pool of red nail polish onto a scrap piece of paper, dip the sharp end of an orangewood stick into the red nail polish and dot on a red nose onto the clown’s face

11) To apply the smile, pour a small pool of bright pink nail polish onto a scrap piece of paper, dip the sharp end of an orangewood stick into the pink nail polish and carefully draw a smile onto the clown’s face…it will be as if you are almost dragging the nail polish from the tip of the orangewood stick into the shape of a smile, re-dip the orangewood stick into the nail polish if needed. Complete steps 7-11 on other accent nail

12) You need to let the nail art on the accent nails dry before attempting the finishing details, while waiting you can complete the nail art on the rest of the nails, so far you have only completed one round of square diagonal nail art

13) Apply the nail art stickers similarly at a diagonal as done before in step 3 but now you will place the sticker a little below the first set of designs so that this round of square diagonal designs will be below the first one so that you are filling in the bottom of your nail with staggered diagonal square designs. Apply nail polish to nails over the nail art stickers and remove the stickers immediately, you will now have 2 rounds of square diagonal nail art designs, complete this step on all nails. Wait for this nail art to dry completely before attempting the third and final round of the square diagonal nail art designs

Two rounds of diagonal sqaure nail art will look like this

14) You can now complete the finishing touches on the clown’s face, pour a small pool of white nail polish onto a scrap piece of paper and dip the sharp end of an orangewood stick into the white nail polish carefully dot on the white nail polish into the middle of the blue triangles to create the eyeball area of the clown’s eyes

15) Once you have completed step 14, using the same technique you will now dip the sharp end of the orangewood stick into the white nail polish and draw on a smile on top of the pink nail polish, this will make the smile pop and give the required look for a clown like smile

16) For the final touch for the clown’s face, pour a small pool of black nail polish on a scrap piece of paper and using the sharp end of an orangewood stick dip the the orangewood stick into the black nail polish and dot on black eyes in the middle of the white dots on the blue triangles. Complete step 14-16 on other accent nail ensuring both accent nails have completed clown faces


As you can see I have a little bit of drag from the tackyness of the red and black nail polish, nothing serious though...just don't take too long while doing the nail art and don't apply the nail polish too thickly

17 ) To complete the third round of square diagonal designs on the nails, follow step 13 again however this time place the nail art further down the nail so as to stagger the diagonal square design so that the last set of designs are placed at the bottom corner of the nails. Complete step 13 in conjunction with step 17 on all remaining nails with the diagonal square nail art designs

Completed - Three rounds of diagonal square nail art

18) Once all nail art is completely dry, apply top coat nail polish

19) Be completely happy and cheery (not scared!) when looking down at your fun mani !

I know it’s kitsch but maybe it’s because her music video is Circus themed but I can’t help but hum along to Britney Spears’s song Circus…I know you want to as well…just do it, it’s ok…it’s a safe place here…we all know despite everything Britney will always be the Queen of Pop…, ‘All the eyes on me in the centre of the ring, Just like a circus (ah, ah, ahaha-hah), When I crack that whip, everybody gonna trip
Just like a circus (ah, ah, ahaha-hah)….la la la'.’