This has nothing to do with sewing...

... but is super cool, so I thought I'd blog about it anyway!

Yesterday afternoon I was wasting time in Priceline, and I found a product by Sally Hansen called Salon Effects. They are patterened 'stickers' to stick on your nails. The box says they are made out of 'real nail polish', so they aren't really stickers at all... I thought it looked interesting, and there was a leopard print box left, so I decided to buy a box and give myself a manicure!


If you didnt already know - I LOVE LEOPARD PRINT! And the thought of having leopard print nails meant I couldnt wait to get home and get on with it.

I really should have taken photos as I put them on, but I was too excited that I forgot all about it. The box comes with a wooden cuticle stick, a small nail file with three textures on it, and 16 nail polish stickers in different sizes for your nails.

It was pretty easy to do, if a bit fiddly. The steps were:

1. Shape your nails with one part of the file
2. Smooth the top of your nail with another part of the file
3. Wipe the nail with some nail polish remover
4. Choose the 'sticker' that fits best and peel it from its backing
5. Stick it to the nail (its a bit sticky on the underside) and stretch it a little as you stick it to the rest of your nail
6. Smooth it over all of your nail
7. Use the part of the file you haven't used yet to 'cut' the excess sticker off - its kind of like gently filing the end of your nail again
8. Your done!

This is how it ended up:

Its REALLY had to take an elegant photo of your own hand.
I thought pin-upy props would help... but I'm not sure if it worked...

Now I was pretty sceptical about how they would stay on. I thought that I would need to put a clear coat like a base coat, then stick the sticker to that, but apparently no. Mind you I couldn't resist - I did put a clear coat on over the top. I fully expected that they would be half gone when I got out of the shower this morning, but they are still as perfect as I managed to put them on.

They don't like extreme heat however. One of them had a run in with my curling wand this morning and 'melted' back from the end of my nail. So there is one thing to avoid if you want to have a go.

Anyway! I'm REALLY happy with the effect and will use them again for special occasions I think. At $15 a pop its not the kind of thing I will be putting on every week.

Thanks for reading!
Beccie

New Inspiration!

I'm always so excited when I get new inspiration. And its even better when other things fall into place to enable me to use that inspiration!

I was reading through my blog list when I came across this one by Lilacs & Lace. In it, Laura Mae makes a fabulous striped dress from a tweaked Vogue Vintage pattern. She in turn had been inspired by a post on Sew Weekly. See, inspiration is a powerful force! Now I loved this dress as soon as I saw it, and I loved the stripes as I haven't worked with fabric with an obvious pattern yet.

Then I opened my mail, and found a Spotlight catalogue. And what do you know, they were having a sale on paper patterns (two for the price of one) and also featured a lovely set of Camelia quilting fabrics, one of which was stripes! Woohoo!!!

So guess where I went today!

SPOTLIGHT!!!

This is the Vogue Vintage reproduction pattern.
It was originally released in 1957.

And here is the stripy fabric! Isn't it beautiful!!!
Had to buy 6 metres of it would you believe

I also bought the following fabrics from the same collection:

I'm going to use them to make wiggle dresses using this vintage pattern:

So thats what I'm so excited about, and I'm really looking forward to being able to start one of these projects! Maybe this weekend...

Thanks for reading!

Beccie
xx