It’s that time again, the
time to be inspired by something I watched! This time it’s the Korean period
drama Moon Lovers: Scarlet Heart Ryeo which is about political intrigues in the
10th Century Goreyo Kingdom sprinkled with romance, action
scenes, a lot of beautiful people[so many princes!], amazing locations and
fantastic costumes. I’m not going to go into too much detail on the plot, but I’ve
attached a promo video that could spark your interest better than writing about
it would.
The costume that inspired
me today is one that the 4th prince, Wang So, wears in two of my favourite
scenes as well as on some of the promo pictures. It’s a hanbok (traditional Korean
costume) made from a black shot with burgundy fabric that has a red motif and
is worn with a sash. Here it is on the actor Lee Joon Gi who is doing an
amazing job of fleshing out this character. Scarlet Heart is worth watching if
for no other reason than for his acting.
One of the few shots where you can see the burgundy fire of the fabric
The costume & a sample of the amazing locations I mentioned
The base colour is
SPAritual Body, the stamp and red lines is A-England Perceval and the tips are
done with Mavala 246 Black Cherry. I was so glas I had Black Cherry available
as it is shot through with the same quality of burgundy colour, one that’s not easy to make out unless you see it
under intense light. The stamp is form Born Pretty's L007 plate.
I
shall leave you with a photo of the princes in modern clothing cause this post
hasn't got enough princes in it!
XxX
Elysse
PS- Drama photos source: SBS, Modern clothing photo source: Cosmopolitan Korea
I saw this “How I did my make up in school”
challenge that’s been making the rounds on youtube and really wanted to do a
similar thing for nails, though I’m going to stretch the time-frame a bit. I
even tried to do it using the same tools and methods I used back in the day
(late 90s-early 00s) and it proved to be so much fun. I can tell it’s going to
be a chattier entry than usual so I hope you enjoy this trip down memory lane
with me.
First of all I was a really late bloomer with regards to make up and polish. In
fact I used to hate both and if you knew me then, you wouldn't believe my love
for them now. Though I always had long nails, usually square or squoval as that
was the fashion back then, I never wore any polish and avoided beauty shops
like the plague. Pearly polishes, pinks and corals were just not my thing and
vampy colours were too scary for young me.
That all changed in my last year of high school when iridescent polish became
very popular. Anything iridescent catches my eye and the allure of iridescent
nails was too strong. I went to a beauty store to find iridescent polish and *boom*
that was it. I fell in love with all the new unusual colours that were out back
then and while I started with what we’d now call an iridescent top coat I soon
moved on to the sparkly dark blues, the purples, the blacks and glitters. I
think I ended up having more than 25 polishes at a time when it was unusual to
have more than 5. It was true love and I wish I hadn’t thrown away those
bottles years ago. I’m going to talk about each style individually, though the
order is not chronological. I think Hole's Violet is an appropriate song to listen to whilst reading since I loved it in HS, it's sufficiently angsty and both Courtney Love and Melissa Auf Der Maur are two of the many uber cool, wonderful and complicated artists of that time.
Thumb: The Distressed nail(A-England
Camelot & OPI Kyoto Pearl)
I really didn't like pearly polish, but my godmother had bought me two. I had
to find a way to use them and the distressed nail was born. I wiped off as much
polish as I could and then brushed it over. I haven’t done this in
years and with the wide OPI brush I couldn’t do the half-butterfly shapes
I could with the much thinner brush. Plus, the OPI polish is too smooth, the ones I had had a more obvious pearl in. Yes, I am complaining that a polish is too smooth.
Index Finger: Kitty Cats (an ancient Revlon
& A-England Camelot)
I love cats, so putting kitty paws and cat shapes on my nails was a very
logical step. I used to do a cat on one nail and kitty paw trails on the
others. It was done with toothpicks or old pens, I didn't even know things like dotting
tools existed as there were no tutorials back in the Pleistocene. The base
colour is similar to one of my favourite nail colours ever, Bourjois Bleu/Or, a colour I talked about on my very first post on this blog. This Revlon is a similar colour, but
has none of the iridescence & none of the magic unfortunately.
Middle Finger: Scotch Tape(OPI Moon Over Mumbai & a disappointing Shu Uemura one)
Scotch tape was my favourite thing to use. I did all sorts of shapes with it.
The base colour has the blue iridescence that I liked. The
dark purple has a little bit of glitter in, but the ones I had and loved had
loads more. They were like Essie’s vintage Starry Starry Night in different dark colours and I loved
them so! I also had a glitter polish with star shaped particles and would place
a couple here and there. I have nothing like that now, so I drew a star
instead.
Ring Finger: Using
glitter gel pens(Korres Spring Lilac)
This was a bit after high school, but I could not exclude it. My flatmate from
uni that knew my love for stationary gave me a set of glitter gel pens as a
birthday present and we soon discovered that you could use them to draw on your
nails and the ink kept its shape, it didn't pool in seconds and it didn't
spread when you put a top coat on it. We went squiggle crazy for the rest of
the year. It was our ‘thing’ and it was fun! I couldn’t
find any pens now that I could do that with so I used a cd-marker and nail
polish.
Pinky: Pure Black(A-England Camelot)
I was intimidated by plain black for the longest of times. I would wear sparkly
black, and dark purple, but not black. And then I randomly bought a black
polish, wore it and could not look away. There was nothing to disguise the
absoluteness of this colour. It even looked cool when it chipped. I wore black non-stop for years after that and it coincided with the time I stopped doing nail art up till the time I
discovered nail stamps many years later, but that’s a different story.
I wore this ring all the time during the last year of HS
Remembering and reminiscing about all this was fun, I don't get nostalgic very often. However, I can't believe I haven't used some of these techniques in so many years. I need to incorporate bits of all of them to my current routine!
Sometimes shopping your stash is a great idea
cause you discover hidden gems which you hadn’t fully appreciated the first
time round. This ancient Rimmel 819 –Green with Envy polish is one such case. I
re-discovered it this spring and I’ve since worn it 5 or 6 times wondering why
I hadn’t previously worn it more often. It’s a super shiny teal with a
blue-green duochrome pearl in. My camera really can’t capture it’s shine and
beauty, it looks almost chrome or molten metal.
I usually wear it on its own, but this time
I decided to go up a scale in the mermaid-o-meter and do some scaly stamping. I
used Models Own - Chrome Gold, a cool gold that wouldn’t contrast the teal,
and stamped it first with A-England - Proserpine. The stamp had thicker lines
than I wanted, but I still liked the idea of adding a bit more texture to the
design so I stamped it using Green with Envy on same plate, which was sheer
enough to make things more interesting without swamping it.
When I woke up today I really wanted to paint my nails purple. No designs, no stamping, just pure purple. A-England's Avalon is the prettiest of my purples, therefore a suitable homage for the man who made purple his signature colour.
"But life is just a party and parties weren't meant to last"
RIP Prince
An old manicure I had forgotten to post. I probably would have done it differently now, but I still like the idea behind it. It’s
based on one of the costumes that Anna Chancellor wore as Caroline Bingley in
the 1995 Pride and Prejudice series. The Bingley sisters wore the most amazing
costumes in that series. I
think I remember this costume best due to the conversation happening during that scene
and Anne Chancellor’s grimace when she gets shot down by Mr.Darcy’s reply. It’s
towards the end of the first episode, for anyone who wants to (re-)watch it.
The deep red is Ciate – Dangerous Affair
and the black is A-England’s Camelot. For the stripes on the red I sheered it
out a bit. I can’t remember which one of my golds I used for this, I think I
mixed one.
I have many posts waiting in my drafts, but I decided to post this one today since I finished it a little while ago. I really needed a little pick-me-up cause I've had the most annoying cold for the past few days.
The base colour is from a Bulgarian company. I've noticed there are a lot of cosmetics around coming from Bulgaria lately, most of them are pretty inexpensive, too. This could be a fledling trend, who knows. Anyway, Brooklin - 9* is a beautiful metallic pink ruby colour that applied beautifully and was opaque in 2 layers.
On top of it I did a gradient stamp with Her Rose Adagio and Fated Prince by A-England* using the Drikk DRK-B plate. This was a little bit more challenging than the gradient stamping I had done before since so far I had only done a gradient using similar colours and tones.
the bottles are so similar
My mani-cure (I am really not well, I am making terrible puns!) is not bringing my voice back, but at least I can stare at my pretty bejewelled nails now. On to some soup and a few episodes of 'Bob's Burgers'.
xxx
Elysse
*All the links in this post are non-affiliated links.
Another one from the vault, one inspired by the many fantastic visuals of the Big Bang "Fantastic Baby" video. I wasn't that keen on the music when I first saw it as kpop is not really my thing, but the style was out of this world.
Let's see if I can remember all the colours I used for this.
Index
A-England - King Arthur (base), Camelot (black) and Stargazer - 232 (silver) stamping with at least one Βundle monster plate.
Middle
The dark base is Galahad by A-England, the thin shiny stripe is Le chat CM - Ashy Green, the tiny triangle is by a greek brand called Erre Due and I suspect the thick stripe is For Audrey by China Glaze.
I am not even going to attempt the ring finger though I recognise a couple
Little finger (not Petyr Baelish)
Etude House (white), A-England - Camelot and Seventeen 533.
The video follows, but if you're not used to kpop , listen at your own peril!
That's it from me and T.O.P.
Another one from the vault of unpublished
images, one that takes inspiration from Byzantium this time. Having been raised
in Greece anything to do with Byzantium was always connected with religion in
an almost oppressive way. It took me quite a few years to see beyond that and
appreciate those times and all their cultural output more.
The design of this plate reminded me of the
cross-shaped stained glass windows that are so common in orthodox churches. The
base is the amazing inky blue with reddish shimmer O.P.I - Every Month is
Oktoberfest and the stamping was done with the chameleon of greens a-England -
Dragon. I couldn’t believe how different Dragon looked here and how much it
shimmered and sparkled. The pictures don’t do it enough justice!
I really felt like doing something freehand
this year for Christmas and I wanted it to be sparkly as well. Morgan Le Fay, a
beautiful shimmering polish, over black was my starting point and then I added
little colourful details here and there.
direct sunlight
artificial light
artificial light
All polishes used for this manicure are from
A-England (non affiliated link)
Base: Camelot
Designs: Morgan Le Fay, Perceval, Order of the Garter, Holy Grail (old version)
Top coat: The Shield
I hope you all have a Merry Christmas/
Happy Holidays! XxX Elysse
Mazzy Star’s album “So tonight that I might see” is one of my favourites of all time. I became acquainted with Hope Sandoval’s warm and otherworldly voice in the early 90s along with the rest of the world through the song ‘Fade into you’. One song was not enough to quench my thirst for music that spoke to me; I got the album and have been under its spell ever since.
It wasn’t just the music I loved, as I found the album cover equally mesmerizing. The early ‘90s were not a time where arabesques were popular and purple has always been a favourite colour of mine. It was only a matter of time before I attempted to replicate the design in one of my manicures.
I tried many colours and combinations to achieve this design, it was harder than I initially thought it would be. In the end I used 1 layer of a-England’s Camelot and then I used Stargazer’s Chrome Nail Polish in 235 to stamp a design from the Drikk drk-A palette and in the end I dabbed a little bit of Le Chat CM in True Violet.
I couldn't not attach a song to this post now, could I?
I have kind of disappeared from this blog, and somehow I always make it back for Hallowe’en. I am starting to believe I may be the phantom of the blogosphere! MWA HA HA HA…
I was only planning on doing some basic Halloween themed stamping, ideas started forming in my head, one thing led to another and I ended up painting them all by hand. It was good fun! They weren’t supposed to be this side up which is how I ended up with the anti-gravity blood. I was going to fix it, but I like it like that. It's more ghoulish!
The nail polishes I used are (thumb to pinky):
Etude House – WH702 with brushstrokes of Korres – 32 Light Mocha
OPI – Stranger Tides, the perfect ghoulish colour
Etude House – WH702 with drops of Essie – 381 Fishnet Stockings as blood
A-England – Camelot, the perfect black for the darkest of nights
Korres – 51 Tempting Coral.
The details were done using acrylic paints.
I couldn’t leave without an appropriate song so here is Tom Waits. It’s the song I was listening to while the idea for the meeting of preternatural creatures on my nails came.
XxX
Elysse
Don't you just love Hallowe'en? I find it's the height of Autumn! Everybody feels festive and nature is at its most glorious!
I am not very experienced with using foils and they are a bit of a headache to be honest, but they are also the best way to achieve an iridescent result.
Breakdown:
1 coat of A-England - Camelot
Foil in Iridescent Swirl
Bundle Monster stamp- white Κοnad polish
Drk stamp- Borghese - B475 Castello Blue. I really liked this one cause while it is visible in sunlightt, it's undetectable anywhere else, much like real spiderwebs.
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