Friday 2 November 2012

The Vintage Fashion Journal: My Obsession with Niki Pilkington Continues

Niki Pilkington is my favourite. I've always been a huge fan of her beautiful illustrations (pretty girls, vintage clothes, animals and painted nails are pretty much right up my street). I'm lucky enough to have limited edition prints adorning the walls of my office and have even done her nails before! You can read her blog about it here.

Painting Niki's nails! (Picture stolen from her blog)
I love writing lists and drawing pictures and jotting down any inspiration that zooms into my head because it zooms out just as quickly. Now, I have a million notebooks, but they're never really that pretty and I'm always ashamed to whap out my dog-eared Tesco's Own on the train!



When I heard that Niki was illustrating The Vintage Fashion Journal, published by Laurence King (the publishing house behind a lot of my favourite fashion books), I couldn't get my hands on a copy quick enough! Every page is different which makes my sporadic page choices (does anyone else do that?) much more fun. Some are ruled, some are blank and some remind me of my primary school jotters. Obviously, the best part is that Niki's lovely illustrations are interspersed throughout the pages, with pictures of vintage fashion trends and retro accessories dotted between pretty girls drinking tea and putting on lipstick.





The Vintage Fashion Journal really is a beautiful little companion, it fits into my handbag perfectly and goes with me everywhere. I love having Niki's pretty illustrations next to my boring "Buy more nail varnish remover" type lists. I almost kind of wish I had two copies, one to write in and one to keep nice. I'll be buying one for all my friend's Christmas presents (shhh...) so I'll maybe nab myself another one then!



 The Vintage Fashion Journal is £12.95 and can be bought from Laurence King Publishing here. Here's what they have to say about this little treasure:

"The Vintage Fashion Journal illustrated by Niki Pilkington and published by Laurence King is an attractive gift for fashionistas, stationary addicts and fans of all things vintage.

The perfect companion for trawling vintage boutiques, galleries, old-school tearooms and flea markets for inspiration, The Vintage Fashion Journal is beautifully presented with a cloth cover and ribbon fastening.

Featuring specially commissioned pictures from fashion illustrator Niki Pilkington, this is a thoughtful gift for lovers of vintage style."



Niki Pilkington - www.nikipilkington.com
Laurence King Publishing - www.laurenceking.com

Buy the journal:
http://www.laurenceking.com/en/the-vintage-fashion-journal/

PSSST! I'm hosting a give-away featuring The Vintage Fashion Journal on my Facebook page! You should totally go and enter it

Friday 24 August 2012

EIFF Highlights




On the left is Flo in the amazing Pam Hogg's bodysuit (nails by me), and on the right is Pam adjusting a mannequin at her exhibition at Summerhall. I painted her nails!










All Images from the Edinburgh International Fashion Festival Facebook











All above photos are Photos by Ross Campbell and Martins Melecis.












All above photos are by PSD Photography. You can see LOADS more on his Facebook page, the photos are so, so beautiful.

Edinburgh International Fashion Festival

A few weeks ago, the wonderful Ana Cruzalegui, MUA extaordinaire and owner of We Are Faux lashes (an Official Sponsor of EIFF), got in contact and asked if I would be interested in overseeing the nails at the Edinburgh International Fashion Festival. I'd already heard about the event at Summerhall and knew it was going to be amazing so I was really honoured to be involved and be part of such a great team. With my fashion background, love for long-limbed other-worldy creatures (models) and 12 year old fan-girl tendancies, it was pretty much the perfect environment for me to be in. Once I stopped swooning over everything at Bebaroque, Pam Hogg's collection and a pile of Prada bags that is!

Nails at the Issey Miyake show, Zoya polish in Jane
Image from the EIFF Facebook page
Just when I didn't think it could get any better, Ana informed me that the event was sponsored by Zoya! Zoya polishes are long-lasting natural polishes that are free from nasties such as toulene, formaldehyde, DBP (phthalates) and camphor. This was great for me as I'd be painting nails for four days solid and great for the models as they'd have their nails painted seven times by the end of the week! I'd never tried any polishes from the brand before, only because I never knew I could pick their polishes up in the UK, but I can definitely say that I am a massive fan and will definitely be purchasing some polishes from zoyapolish.co.uk . Thanks Zoya!

The polishes I picked from Zoya: (Top, L-R) Jane, Dulcinea, Portia, Jana, Codie (Bottom, L-R) Arizona, Paz, Tamsen, Rekha, Kym, Colbie (Not Pictured - Richelle) 

I met and worked with some amazing people over the four days and I'd like to say a huge thank-you to the amazing Alison Cuthbert for coming to help me out, check out her beauty page on Facebook and follow her on twitter! Also, Thanks to Jade Koemans for stepping in until Alison could make it!

I don't know much about make-up, but Sarah Tolan from Scottish Beauty Blog was covering the event. You can find her post here. You can also find all the links to everyone involved at the bottom of the page!



Nail Polish-Jane Lg


Issey Miyake was the first show of the day. I used four coats of, the normally very sheer (and actually meant for French tips), Jane to create a lovely creamy look on the models' nails after giving them all a super quick file and shape. I thought this shade would best compliment the fresh look that Ana and her team created on the models, with orange shadow on the eyes and berry coloured lips. (Bottom right imaged pinched from Sarah at Scottish Beauty Blog!)



Nail Polish-Richelle Sm


For the Bebaroque show, Ana and Gary worked together to transform the models into beautiful mermaids who looked like they had just emerged from the sea. A lovely bronze shadow was used on the girl's eyes and I thought Richelle complimented it perfectly. (Bottom left image pinched from Ana's instagram!)



Nail Polish-Portia Sm


Well. I'm in love. Portia is my new favourite polish! The MUA's slicked some violet lip gloss on to the models and dusted their eyes with a lovely pink eye shadow. I picked out Portia because it was a nice, cool and creamy nude with violet undertones but I totally underestimated it. No-one wanted to take it off! (Bottom centre image pinched from Ana;s instagram!)


Nail Polish-Dulcinea Sm



For the Aimee McWillaims show, the girls were to look like ghostly dolls. Ana kept the colour palette nude and pressed different colours of eye shadow on to the models' lips to create the ghostly effect, it looked amazing! Aimee and the make-up artists worked together to assign each model a shade within these colours: Green, Blue, Yellow, Orange and Violet. We didn't have polishes in bright colours and they wouldn't have created that matte, powdery look anyway so I decided to press a colour corresponding to each model's lips on top of two coats of nearly-dry Zoya's beautiful nude polish, Dulcinea (if it was dry the powder would slide off and if it was too wet the colour would be far too intense). We finished the nails off with a matte topcoat to eliminate any shine and compliment the matte make-up. I absolutely loved this look and will definitely try it again!


Zoya Nail Polish in JanaZoya-Nail-Polish-Codie-ZP566
Zoya Polishes: Jana & Codie



I still can't believe I did nails for a Pam Hogg show! I also can't believe I did Pam Hogg's nails - waaahhh! I picked out a Jana, a beautiful taupe, and the cool, dark, chocolatey Codie after seeing the make-up for the show, which consisted of beautiful cool hades of brown on the eyes and the lips (can you tell I'm not a make-up artist?). I always think dark brown is such a classy and expensive looking colour for nails and the taupe was such a nice, fresh compliment.


Zoya-Nail-Polish-Arizona-ZP617-Banner Image-Large Image-Small ImageNail Polish-Paz Sm
Zoya Polishes: Arizona & Paz


Well who doesn't love an orange polish! The look for this show was a bright pop of colour on the eyes in Blues, Oranges, Yellows, Greens and Violets. We painted up a storm with the lovely, creamy, tangerine Arizona shade and the awesome, neon orange Paz.



Nail Polish-Kym Sm
Zoya Polish: Kym


The Borcher show was a wonderful finale to the Catwalk shows at EIFF. The whole team went all-out and created an absolutely stunning and seductive look with intense reds, deep coppers and bronze colours. The only polish for this job was Zoya's Richelle, the multi-tonal, reflective sparkles of copper in this beautiful copper shade are to.die.for. It's absolutely beautiful and went went perfectly with the look. How amazing are the "Silver Spell" lashes from We Are Faux?!


So that was the Fashion Festival! It was a brilliant four days, and if you're at-all worried about the models cuticles (...no? Only me?) then not to fear - we lathered them up in cuticle oil between each look. 

Links: (Designer Links are in the titles)

EIFF

Zoya Nail Polish

Ana Cruzalegui - MUA 

We Are Faux - Eyelashes and Sponsor

Gary Lees & Team - Hair
Lees & Thompson Hairdressing, Motherwell
(I scoured the internet for like 40 mins looking for links and these guys are hard to find! Elusive = Exclusive!)

Ian Tod - Stylist

Alison Cuthbert - Beauty Therapist

Make-up Team - There were so many of you so please comment below!
Jade Koemans - twitter.com/JadeKoemans
Mel Wright - www.youtube.com/user/mel171106
Elaine Burns - www.facebook.com/homespabeauty
Samantha Johnston - twitter.com/SamJohnstonMUA

Sarah Tolan - Scottish Beauty Blog
scottishbeautyblog.co.uk/
www.facebook.com/pages/Scottish-Beauty-Blog/183697865083026
twitter.com/ScotBeautyBlog

Summerhall
www.summerhall.co.uk/
twitter.com/Summerhallery