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