Artsy Wednesday: Designer-inspired - Joris Laarman

I hope you're doing great today?  I'm so excited to bring you todays nails. 

The weather's finally broken, and after 3 weeks of non stop dry and sunny weather, we've had storms for the last few days.  I don't mind that though, I think that one of the good things about living in the UK is that the weather seldom stays stable long enough to get bored of it.  What on earth would we make small talk about otherwise?

This weeks Artsy Wednesday theme is "designer inspired".  Of course it's not that long since I did my Louis Vuitton nails (link) so if I was really lazy, I could always repost them!  But I'm not really lazy (most of the time), so I came up with something else.

Rather than going down the fashion designer route, I took my inspiration from other quarters.  As well as nail art design, I also love interior design, particularly anything that's beautiful to look at as well as functional.  Form and function together really floats my boat :-)

There is a dutch design house started by a man called Joris Laarman who are really creating some inspirational and innovative designs.  One of my favourite creations is their furniture range called "Bone".

Here's the nail design I did based around one of their chairs:

I'm really happy with this design.  It came out even better than I planned.  The base polish is OPI Skull and Glossbones,  and then I mixed up black and white acrylic paints until I came up with a grey I was happy with.  In real life Skull and Glossbones is a taupe/grey and that really makes a difference.

Then I used my new BFF bargain nailart brush, the Daler Rowney spotter 10/0 brush from my blog post at the weekend (link) to paint on the design.

Here's a screenshot from the Joris Laarman website (link) to show you what I'm talking about:

How beautiful is this?  It's so elegant whilst managing to be Art Nouveaux yet modern.  I love it.

I picked small sections of the picture of the chair, and painted those on my nails.  Here's another pic:
I like that this design is abstract.  It's attracted alot of positive comments, and people have seen many different things in it, from trees to veins haha.

I even managed to do my other hand, although not quite so nicely of course:

I've definitely found this an addictive design.  I can't stop looking at it!  I love that it reminds me of that beautiful, beautiful, chair, without actually being a chair on my nails.

I'll be so sad when it chips and I have to take it off, but I suppose that just makes room for more designs :-)

The other girls in the Artsy Wednesday group will have done their nails too!  Here's their links:

Catrine at Unnaked Nails (link)
Michelle at Labmuffin (link)

Maria at Maria's Nail Polish Blog (link)

Melanie at Nail and Polish (link)
Jessica at Beauty Gnome (link)
Emily at An Accent Nail (link)
Ameerah at Valiantly Varnished (link)
Anna & Haylee at Makeup and Masala (link)
Rosemarie at Every Little Polish (link)

What do you think?  Do you like abstract designs?

Until next time...

MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~

Let there be light! ...for my blog photos

Hi all!

I've had this post in my 'drafts' folder for ages now, and as it's starting to get light again, I thought I'd better post it before it's no longer relevant!

Am starting to bet a bit fed up of going to work in the dark, and coming home in the dark.  Don't get me wrong, I love getting snuggled down in front of the fire with a hot choc, and wearing my chunky jumpers, but it's not condusive to good blog photos!

I'm a perfectionist too, I think most nail bloggers, and bloggers in general, are a bit that way.  We spend so long paying attention to the tiny details that we want it all to be nicely represented in our pictures.  Plus alot of nail looks take time to do, so why sell them short with substandard pics?

So, I've been on a bit of a mission to give myself some lighting options to allow swatching and photographing on the long winter nights.  Really it's the ideal time, as there's not much else to do when it's cold and dark outside.

So to that end, I've bought some things.  Here they are and the results I got.  Firstly, as a 'control' I took a pic today in the sunlight.  I've chosen my new BFF, OPI Skull and Glossbones, topped with Elf Fairy Dust, both of which will be swatched and reviewed in upcoming posts.

So the first option I have for indoor lighting, is the undercupboard LED lights in the kitchen.  These are my usual 'go-to' indoor lights:

And here's the result I got:

The colour match isn't bad, but the glare from the light means I lose some definition.

So then, we get on to things I bought this week.  The first thing I bought was a 'daylight' energy saving bulb.  The brightest one they had in the shop was 100 watt equivalent:

As you can see, I paid £5.99, and the nail envy is for size comparison.  So here's the results I got from it:

I found this lighting really awkward, I put it in my bedside light (yes we do have chipboard wallpaper lol), it took five minutes or so to warm up, but for some reason the lighting seemed to confuse the camera and I had trouble with the camera zooming in and out of focus.  I don't know if that's the fault of the lighting or the background, but I wasn't liking it much.  Also the bulb got so hot, I got a bit worried that my hair was hanging near it. 

One other thing, it was difficult to get close enough to the bulb to get enought bright light without actually getting the bulb in the shot.  So all in all, not a great success, but on the plus side, it's not a bad colour representation, and it was fairly cheap.

So next we have my trusty craft light.  I've mentioned this in quite a few posts before, so here it is:

It's a really handy thing, the top section is all bendy, I usually have it down my side of the sofa, and I bend it down out of the way while I'm not using it.  The top bit comes away, and it came with a table clip you can use.  It also came with an additional extension pole so you can use it as a standing lamp, handy! 

It has lots of LED's inside, and a magnifying glass:

It's good to use while painting my nails when other half is watching TV, as I can angle it away from him so he's not bothered by the light, and I can still see what I'm doing.  It's nice and bright to work by.  Here's the nail picture result:

I couldn't get the awesome flakies to show up, the colour is washed out, and you can see the ring of lights reflected in the polish.  In dark cremes this is even worse, not great for swatching then.  I do sometimes use it for taking quick Friday night instagram pics, but I like the photos on my blog to be as good as they can be.

So then, on to the big purchase I made this week.  you may have noticed in the craft light shot, there was a black bag in the background.  Well this is my new portable photo studio:

I bought it from Amazon, I paid just over £30 HERE's the link

And here it is (badly) assembled.  I had some bits left over so I know I did it wrong, but I was excited to try it:

Looks pretty professional, right?  It was much bigger than I expected, from the Amazon reviews I thought it was going to be teeny tiny.  Cool that all this fits into that bag.

So here's the result:

This is probably the nicest lighting from all my experimental lighting, but a little bit yellow which I wasn't expecting, and was a little bit disappointed about that.  I got good definition, and it picked up the flakies nicely.  I also tried to use just one of the lights from the kit directly without the filter box:

This turned out even more yellow, no good.  Plus now I can see a streak in my topcoat, and a dent, which I hadn't noticed before.

So there we have everything I've tried so far, nothing as good as daylight yet, but the photo box set up will probably do when I'm desperate to do some swatches.  I wonder how the craft light will work using the photo box filters? hmmm still things to try then....

Apologies for the picture heavy post, I hope it hasn't caused you any problems, the hunt goes on!

Until next time....

MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~

TX Maxx OPI Trio - Swatches and Review

Hi there again!

I've been back to my trusty ole TK Maxx, and yes, I've come away with lots of polishes as usual.  I really don't think I'll get round to swatching and reviewing all of them, especially now with the winter light preventing weekday swatching, but I've done these ones today for you. 

I have a massive blog post half way done about winter photography lighting, but I don't want to publish it until I successfully manage to find good lighting, and I haven't managed it yet.

Here's how they come packaged.  It's quite a cute little bag they come in with poppers on the top.  Waste not want not, I'm going to use it to keep my stamping plates in, as the little OPI bag I keep them in now is full to bursting.

As you can see I paid £14.99, which isn't too bad for three.  I don't really wear alot of pinks or reds, but I don't have many OPI's, so I thought I'd give them a go.

The first one I tried was on the left hand side, Be A Dahlia, Won't You.  It's alot pinker that it shows in my photos, in the bottle it looks like a red base with fuschia flecks.

Here's the first pic:

The first coat was a bit sheer, thin and a bit patchy, definite VNL.  Quite nice and flowy though.  If you don't mind a tiny bit of nail line, you could definitely get away with two coats.  By the third coat the VNL was pretty much gone, and the colour had a nice depth to it.  Dry time was medium.

Here's the close up:

It's not bad, but there are others like this in my collection which I like more.

The next one I tried was Big Hair, Big Nails.  From the first coat, I knew this wasn't one for me.  Here's the one coat pic:

Sheer enough for you?

However, in the interests of science (lol), I carried on with it, but I knew this was never going to opacity.  The formula was a little bit runny, but nice and smooth.

Here's what it looked like at three coats:

Such a shame, because it didn't give me lobster fingers, and it's quite hard to find a red that suits my skintone.

Here's the close up:

I know for a fact I won't ever wear this by itself, I'll maybe try layering it over a nude polish and see how that goes.

The last one I tried was Skull and Glossbones:

The formula was thin, and streaky at the first coat.  Dry time was medium/fast. The second coat self levelled nicely, but was still a bit patchy.  After 3 coats I still had a couple of bald spots at my cuticles, but these were pretty simple to cover.   And it was so worth it!  I love this colour.  It's a warm light grey creme, and it somehow has an ethereal look to it.

Here's another picture (I took lots):

It has a lovely shine to it, and it's definitely one I'll be reaching for alot.  Strangely, now winters on its way, and I should be embracing the darks, I seem to be having a pastel phase, oh well!

Finally, here's the brush shot:

All in all, a mixed bag.  But Skull and Glossbones redeems this set.  I highly recommend that one, the other two I wouldn't bother with personally, but am sure they'll come in handy for something! 

Until next time....

MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~