Spring 2012 Fashion Trend: Color Block with Brights Nail Design

While searching for some inspiration for a nail design on fashion websites, I noted a particular theme this season. Color blocking seems like it will never go out of style, but this year, it looks like brights are the go-to colors. I observed color-blocking on the runway last year this time and while the colors were bold and eye-catching, they weren’t nearly this bright.

Check out this lemon yellow Nanette Lepore dress. Now check out the model on her way off the runway in that bright coral dress with neon yellow accessories!!! LOVE!

From what I’ve been able to pick up, when color-blocking this spring, the key is to keep things bold and graphic kind of like these Guiseppe Zanotti patent sandals from Net-a-Porter.

For this manicure, I used several colors: Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Pacific Blue (blue), Orly Passion Fruit (pink), OPI Did It On ‘Em (yellow-green), Julep Helena (purple), Julep Leah (green), Orly Liquid Vinyl (black) and China Glaze Pelican Gray (gray). I also used a white Kiss Nail Art striper for the white lines.

If you’d like more inspiration and tips for color-blocking brights this spring: check out this slideshow (Bright Neon Clothing) and this slideshow (Color Block Pieces) from Refinery 29.com. I’ve also seen some really cute neon accessories at Target this season. I might have to go ahead and pick something up. 🙂

Hope you like ’em!

Ombré Caviar Nails

So I took a brief trip into the world of caviar nails in my last post, but for this one, I wanted to go all out. Again, I wanted to do something different than how people are now using craft microbeads to create interesting texture on nails. Why not call on my good old friend, the ombré color scheme?

My microbead collection is pretty limited but I was able to find 3 complimentary blues and 3 complimentary pinks to create this look. The base nail polish color under the pink nails is OPI Pink-ing Of You and OPI Fly (from the Nicki Minaj collection) is under the blue one. The texture is *weird* and I’ve already had a few people do double-takes then touch my nails.  But hey, I gave up my personal space long ago when I started to put artwork on my nails. 🙂

Hope you all enjoy them too.

My coworker called them ‘braille nails’. Is that offensive?

New Nail Trend! Caviar Nails

Whew, these new nail trends seem to be coming out every day! Well the new-new nail trend is Caviar Nails. A UK nail company, Ciate, is now packaging tiny crafts pearls for usage in nail art design. A few friends/fellow nail enthusiasts brought this article over on Madame Noire to my attention recently and I knew I had to find a way to make this concept my own. I already owned some of these tiny beads and I’d used them in an exploratory manicure just because I was so excited to get a package full of stones, rings, pearls etc. For this manicure, I decided to put more thought into the color scheme and incorporate the last new-new nail trend, the Outline/Border manicure. So here you go!

For this manicure, I layered China Glaze Midnight Mission and Tempest for my thumb, ring, and pinky fingers. For the pointer-outline/border nail, I used OPI Pompeii Purple (which is really more of a fuchsia, no?) and outlined it with gold glitter polish. On the middle-caviar nail, the base color is the same as the majority of my nails, but I affixed purple, pink and gold “caviar pearls” to it.

Judging by this pic currently on the Ciate site, it looks like you’ll need to use your own craft pearls (which can be found at Jo-Ann’s) for now if you’d like to try this manicure yourself. Hope you enjoy!

UPDATE 4-13-2012: Sephora is now offering the Ciate Caviar Manicure kits online. http://www.sephora.com/ciate-caviar-manicure-tm-P311207?skuId=1429588

New Trend! The Outline/Border Manicure

So yesterday or the day before, Necole Bitchie, a fashion/trend/gossip blogger asked her fans if the manicure below was ‘Bitchie or Not’. I’m guessing ‘Bitchie’ is good so I definitely vote Bitchie!

I thought it was SO cute. I love high contrast, I love refined design (vs abstract art on nails)…but how would I make it my own? I decided to keep it simple in order to get used to the technique of creating the outline so I used 5 different pops of colors under black. Lilac – Ulta Tutu Cute ; Green – China Glaze In The Limelight; Yellow – China Glaze Lemon Fizz; Periwinkle – China Glaze – Secret Peri-wink-le; Pink – China Glaze Shocking Pink; Black – Orly Liquid Vinyl

So folks…is it Bitchie or Not? 😀

Pat yourself on the back if you saw the hints of periwinkle nail polish on the knuckle of my ring finger…sheesh lol

Rihanna You Da One-Inspired Spring Manicure

Forgive me. I’m not used to photographing my right hand…

I’m a huge fan of Rihanna (and her nails) and after listening to the entire Talk That Talk deluxe album on repeat yesterday, I felt a manicure inspired by one of her many nail designs would be apropo. Below is a screen shot of her black and white chevron moon manicure from the You Da One video. I think that would be the most accurate description of what she’s got here…

Placing a triangular shape at the tip of the nail (as in a chevron French manicure) or in the moon (reverse-French) position as I have done takes a simple nail design like the French or moon manicure and makes it a bit more edgy. For my manicure, I use China Glaze For Audrey (Tiffany blue) and Peachy Keen (peach) for a muted spring look. If you’ve looked at other posts on my blog, you know that I love bold colors and patterns, but I decided to keep this one simple…but edgy.

Hope you like. 🙂

Personal Nail Challenge

So, as I’ve started painting other people’s nails, I realize that most folks want you to make up designs on the fly. Some give a color scheme they’d like, some give a broad idea and some come with no inspiration at all. Since many of my own designs are inspired by things I observe and I give myself all the time in the world to complete them, it’s sort of tough to just make up something cute on the fly…and quickly! I mean, people who want their nails painted don’t have time for me to sit and ponder. I clearly need to put serious thought into how I’ll go about things when my nails are not the canvases. But…

I realized very few other types of designers or artists would be asked regularly to create original pieces of art on the spot with little to no prep or inspiration as fast as possible. I began to consider the types of artists that DO create art in this way and off the top of my head, I thought of caricature artists. Think on it for a bit: A person sits down in front of them and they’re expected to draw the person well and add a bit of flair to make it special…quickly! The quicker the better, actually, since there’s probably a line of people waiting who want the same quality and special flair. To add difficulty to the craft, many of these artists work in permanent marker or similar tools so they’ve GOT to get it right the first time. Oh, and there are people walking by looking over you shoulder judging your work as you go. Sheesh! I’ve got a new-found respect for caricature artists. I thought about how much practice, trial and error it must have taken for these illustrators to get good at sketching faces quickly while adding a personal touch. How can I make aspects of their technique work for my own creations….?

Right now, my designs are the result of quite a bit of thought and even some practice on my own nails or blank artificial nail “canvases”. So in order to become more like caricature artists, I gave myself a personal challenge: pick some random colors that you normally wouldn’t necessarily see together and create one funky nail design. But I promised myself that once I committed to doing a certain design on the nail that I wouldn’t go back. I wouldn’t “erase” and start over. So there’s the result!

The colors I chose: Orly Pink Chocolate (a muted magenta), OPI Fly (a teal creme of the Nicki Minaj collection), OPI Did It On ‘Em (a yellow-green creme also Nicki Minaj/OPI), Orly Rage (metallic gold), Orly Liquid Vinyl (black). I added rhinestones, glitter and rings to the mix just to spice things up. So there’s the result!

I still need to get faster at executing the design but I think I’m off to a good start. Expect more personal challenges in the future. 😀

Rings and Things

I absolutely love the almond nail shape but I recognize that an edgier nail shape can look a little scary if the color scheme is also edgy. So for this nail design, I went ultra-feminine…I found some cool rhinestones, rings and beads so I decided to use a few different types in this design :-).

The base color is Orly Artificial Sweetener, a medium mauve-y pink with a bit of a gold shimmer. Hope you all enjoy 😉

Mercedes Benz Fashion Week-Inspired Nail Design

Ever since I’ve become interested in nail art, I’ve looked forward to seeing how designers showing at the bi-annual Mercedes Benz  Fashion Week use nails to make a statement. But during the Fall 2012 Fashion Week (held February 9 – 16, 2012) I saw very few innovative, inspiring nail designs. In fact, quite a few designers opted for neutral-toned nails. Yawn. I did find ONE designer, however, that did some really interesting things with nails this year.

Would you look at these nails worn by models in The Blonds fashion show??!

Leather nails?! Nails covered in crushed glass/crystal?! Now I don’t know if I’d have the guts to cut up pieces of leather for everyday nails and crushed glass seems a bit unsafe…but check out the blue ombre nails in the picture below…They used very finely crushed glass and crystal, but what’s stopping me from using a very fine glitter to bring the look from the runway to real life? Nothing 🙂

For this manicure I painted the majority of my nails in Orly Fresh (a fun grassy green) and I used 3 shades of very fine glitter to create the crushed-glass-ombre effect. This was easier than working with glitter nail polish in terms of getting an opaque glitter finish, but much messier. I’m still pleased with the results.

Hope you enjoy!

Love Machine

So this manicure is completely random. I was literally driving home thinking about what could be my next Valentine’s Day-themed manicure and I thought, “what if I paint a little robot with hearts in his eyes and call it a Love Machine?”. RANDOM and kinda corny. Dah well! 🙂

I’m still all over the no-nail-the-same trend so I allowed my mind to wander on the rest of the nails. I used Orly Fancy Fuchsia for the base color for my thumb and pointer fingers, Zoya Purity for my middle finger and Wet n Wild Fast Dry Ebony Hates Chris on my ring and pinky fingers.

Hope you like! This Valentine’s Day theme is fun!

Tiffany & Co. Inspired French Manicure

Hello good people! It’s been a while since I last posted but I’m back!

Yesterday I realized Valentine’s Day is coming up so I figured I do a few lovey-dovey themed posts to honor the occasion. For this post, I was inspired by the classic gift-wrapping of Tiffany & Co., the famous jewelry and silverware corporation.

I haven’t been able to find another nail polish that matches this color better than China Glaze For Audrey. I used that on my ring finger accent nail and painted a white bow and ribbons over it. On my other nails, I created a simple French manicure using a Kiss nail art striper brush. I also used one thin coat of Orly Twilight for a bit of shimmer on the French manicured nails.

Look out for more Valentine’s day themed posts this week and next week 🙂