These nails have been approved by Spider-Man

So the other day I was a HOT MESS. I did a really pretty eye look in the morning, but I was in rush and I forgot to put on mascara. So when I was out I bought some really cheap NYC stuff. THEN I realized I forgot to put on deodorant(and I need it guys, Old Spice Sweat Defence in After Hours is a life saver), sooooooo I went out and found a cheap bottle of Dove's deodorant for men(I hate how woman's deodorant smells), and bought it. FINALLY when I went home that night from the boys place, I wore my shirt inside out, IN PUBLIC. And just so you know this shirt is literally a different colour when it's inside out(The shirt is just a mass of colours thrown together and when it is inside out the pattern is still there, but it looks like a faded yellow and blue shirt).

So in the spirit of unplanned things happening here is a manicure I didn't plan on doing :P

This popped up on my tumblr dashboard yesterday, a pretty, pretty, Prada, purse, photographed by Maurizio Di Iorio. And I knew I had to do something inspired by it. This whole look was done using tape(minus the blue), because I'm not skilled enough to draw perfect lines. I started with a base of China Glaze's Stoked to be soaked. Then I taped off half the nail with scotch tape and added OPI's Over the Taupe, then with striping tape I added the yellow, which is Sinful Colors Pull Over. Finally I added Sally Hansen's *Pacific Blue for the tips. It is safe to say myself along with Spider-Man like my nails.

*Pacific Blue is SUPER deceptive. It is not that intense in real life. Although a lot of swatches look that intense, that is how it photographs a lot of the time. Yes, it is vibrant, but it's not that vibrant.

Mara Hoffman Inspired Nails

I have yet another Born Pretty Store plate to share with you today! This is plate BP-L 003. When I saw this plate I knew I had to have it because a)It has a lot of nice designs and b)On my laptop I have a nail art inspiration folder. The second I saw the plate I knew one of the designs would be perfect for a photo I had sitting in the folder for months. The photo is of a dress from the Mara Hoffman RTW SS 2015 line.

Gorgeous model in a Mara Hoffman dress

The plate was a bit tricky to use. As you can see some of the designs have some fine details(like the centre of my swirls). I found that I had to use a thinner polish(OPI Alpine Snow) if I wanted those smaller lines to show up. I originally used Sinful Colors Show Me White, but I could never get the centre of the wave patterns to show up. Maybe an actual stamping polish would play nicer. And just so you know, the other colours I used were Pure Ice's Party hard  for the blue, and the sun was all acrylic paint that I mixed.

 On the left I stamped with OPI's Alpine show and on the right is Sinful Colors Snow me White

That aside I really like this plate, it has a lot of other designs that don't have such fine details. I can't wait to whip it out again! If you would like this plate, you can find it here, where you can buy it for $5.99 USD. And of course you can add Varnished Valkyries 10% discount code EAL91.

 *Product sent for honest review

A-Z Challenge - Fashion: ????????????

So that time of the week has rolled around once again, the A-Z Challenge. This week was F for Fashion which I was SUPER excited about. Fashion would have to be one of my favorite things I look to for inspiration. And I knew exactly what I wanted to do for this manicure. I wanted to recreate a fashion inspired manicure I did back in 2012. I never shared it because I didn't like how it turned out, but I did save the photo of my manicure and the photo of the outfit that inspired me because I still wanted to give the design a go at a later date.

Long story short I found the photo of the old manicure on my old laptop, but I could not for the life of me find the photo of the outfit. So my design is mainly based on my old manicure. It's frustrating because I can see the outfit in my head. It looked like a semi-sheer white raincoat made out of all these squares and rectangles, that were outlined in black, and layered to create the jacket.

If you have ANY idea where my inspiration originally came from please let me know. This is driving me up the wall!

This was the closest thing I could find to what my original inspiration was. Now instead it was structured less like a normal coat and more like and artsy coat made out of squares. This is the best description I have :/

For more fashion inspired manicures check out these awesome blogs!

An InLinkz Link-up

Louboutin Nails(Polish not included) & Meeting a dead man.

In case you haven't figured out from the title of this post, this has nothing to do with the super pricey Louboutin polishes. I MAY get the red one in the future just for novelty sake, but as of now I don't own it. But just because I don't have the polish, doesn't mean I can't have some Lubu nail fun!

For this manicure I used Orly Liquid Vinyl and I topped it off with some black rhinestones from KKCenterHk. I loved how despite the fact that they are rhinestones, they still look really subtle and they don't overpower. They add just enough to the manicure. Then on the underside of my nails I used Essie's Fishnet Stockings to mimic the bottom of the shoes. I like how this turned out, but I think I would have liked it a bit more had I done them now, as I have more of a free edge.

Time for a funny Toronto International Film Festival story! So one of the days I was there a couple of the girls came in and they were super excited. They had seen the "mean uncle" from Harry Potter. When they told me I asked them if they were sure. They told me they were positive. I then informed them that the man who played Uncle Dursley(Richard Griffiths) had died more than a year ago.

I swear this looked AMAZING!

I'm going to be honest with you guys, because we're all friends here. When it comes to glitter swatches I sometimes don't care for macro shots. It's not that they aren't pretty, but let's be real when are you ever going to see your nails like that? I just feel like sometimes when looking at polish from different distances can make it look different kind of like with different lighting. I'm making sense right?

Well this manicure is the opposite of that. I know this isn't macro, but it is a close up. While it looks kind of cool I don't think it looks it's best. This manicure in my opinion is a perfect "To be seen from a distance-acure". It's one of those manicures that catches peoples eye, but not in an obnoxious way.

To get this look I first got some inspiration from on of my favourite mediums to get inspiration from, Fashion. The piece I based this on was from Felder Felder's Autumn Winter 2014 collection. To get the effect of the dress I used the dry brush technique using a fan brush. A technique where you wipe most of the paint off your brush before using it on you nails, giving it a distressed look. I used a combo of polish and acrylic paints over a white polish.

Have you tried this technique before?

Also could someone please buy me the dress? Please and thank you :P

Fashion! Put it all on me! (This is ALMOST a Lady Gaga Post!)

So it's currently almost 3:30am. I was about to finally go to sleep like an hour ago, but then I remembered I had to submit something and upload some photos to Google Drive. I'm currently watching the photos upload.  It has taken 10 minutes to upload 4 photos...20 more to go. I'll probably go to sleep when at least 50% has been uploaded. My laptop is super poopy so I want to make sure I get at least half up. Actually I'm going to sleep now. It's all in the hands of the internet Gods/Godesses now. This post will have to wait.

2 DAYS LATER

So fashion is probably one of my favourite things to get inspiration from. Especially when it comes to runway stuff. You have all the "normal" Ready To Wear lines and then you have those Haute Couture lines where everyone is wearing a garbage bag made out of glitter. While some of it may not be practical, from an art point of view it can be amazing! Today I have something that was sitting on my computer in my inspiration bin literally for years! This outfit was part of Gucci's 2012, spring, ready to wear line. For this I used Sinful Colors Hey, You!, a no name Gold Dior(it was part of a set and not intended to be sold individually which is why I think it has no name), and I don't remember which of my blacks I used.

 

Ps. Sorry these photos are kind of sketch looking :/ Please forgive me and accept this Lady Gaga Song as a piece offering. 

If I had done a top nail art list for 2013, this would have been on it.

So I'm a bit late posting this.  I actually did this last year, shortly after Christmas.  It was one of those manicure that you look at and think "I am never taking you off".  And when you do take it off a small part of you cries.

Even though I rarely do them I love fashion inspired nails.  Like I said I don't do them often, but I do have a whole folder full of fashion stuff for inspiration.  I just think fashion is a really great place to look if you are in search of some fun ideas, or you are just flat out of ideas but still want a neat design on your nails.

For you today I have these Vivienne Tam, Spring 2014 line nails.  The minute I saw it I knew I had to put it on my nails.  This was super easy to do.  I simply painted my nails white, blobbed on dots of acrylic paint an polish in varying colours(You don't have to use one or the other, the colours I needed I don't own all in polish or all in paint), finally using the sugar spun technique I strung black polish all around the nail.

What do you think of these?  What do you use for inspiration?

 

Rodarte Inspired Nails

So despite the fact that I have a folder, on my desktop labeled 'Fashion'(which is full of mostly runway photos that I intended to use for nail inspiration), that has been collecting photos for almost 7 months now.  I have yet to actually sit down and do fashion inspired nails since February when I did my Diane von Fürstenberg nails, and Richard Chai nails. Until now. (Okay that's a bit of a lie.  I've done about 3 since then.  But they all turned out looking like poop so I never posted them).

I really just wanted something really simple to do.  So when I was rummaging through the folder and saw this Rodarte piece I knew I had to do it.  All I used was OPI's Onyx, and acrylic paint.  I was going to use Illamasqua Scorn to give it that leather look.  But I realized the paint would look like well, dry paint when it was dry.  And that would mean I would probably have to add topcoat to it making everything shiny.  My other thought was put a matte topcoat on top.  But then I realized that not only would the paint still look like dry paint but, since Scorn had no shimmer in it, it would also look like dry paint.  So it was plain black polish for me!

Ps.  Badass post tomorrow! Well I think it's badass.

Richard Chai Inspired Nails

It's times like these where I wish I had a super amazing camera.  This looks MUCH better in person.  Like the blue is less bright and the shimmer is less pronounced.  I almost wasn't going to post it but what the hell.

My inspiration for this was an outfit from Richard Chai's 2012 fall/winter collection.

I used Sephora by OPI's Break a Leg Warmer,  OPI's Miami Beet, Butter London Big Smoke, Ruby Kisses Steel Magnolia and paint.

Diane von Fürstenberg Inspired nails

First off I could never pronounce Fürstenberg properly. Why you might ask? Simple, most of the times I saw her name there wasn't a umlaut. That makes the name!!! If you're gonna have a wicked awesome German name you should always pronounce it in it wicked awesome way. Ja?

Now onto the nails! Theses pictures are from her Fall 2012 RTW collection.

While I liked the colour of the outfit I decided to go with Blue.  I don't think yellow looks good on me at all. And I used Sally Hansen's Blue Pacific, OPI's Black Onyx and paint.

I didn't have a cream teal so I used Orly Sweet Peacock. For the domino I used paint and a french manicure polish by Nailene. 

Hopefully I'll have some more fashion inspired nail art soon!