DIY Nails: fashion

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!

ISSEY MIYAKE

Zoya Polish - Jane

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!)

BEBAROQUE

Zoya Polish - Richelle

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!)

HARVEY NICHOLS

Zoya Polish - Portia

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!)

AIMIEE MCWILLIAMS

Zoya Polish: Dulcinea

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!

PAM HOGG

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.

FRESH CUTS: 2012 FASHION GRADUATES

Zoya-Nail-Polish-Arizona-ZP617-Banner Image-Large Image-Small Image

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.

BORCHER

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

http://edinburghinternationalfashionfestival.com/

http://www.facebook.com/EdinburghInternationalFashionFestival

https://twitter.com/edinfashion

Zoya Nail Polish

www.zoya.com

www.zoyapolish.co.uk

www.facebook.com/ZoyaNailPolish

twitter.com/Zoya_NailPolish

Ana Cruzalegui - MUA

www.anacruzalegui.com/

www.facebook.com/anacruzmakeupartist

twitter.com/anacruzmakeup

We Are Faux - Eyelashes and Sponsor

www.wearefaux.com/

www.facebook.com/wearefauxlash

twitter.com/wearefaux

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

www.iantod.com/

www.facebook.com/pages/Ian-Tod-professional-fashion-stylist/131233240227151

Alison Cuthbert - Beauty Therapist

www.facebook.com/BeautyByAlison

twitter.com/alisoncuthbert

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

Last weekend I had the absolute pleasure of working with these lovely ladies on a shoot. The whole day was filled with colour, stickers, pom poms, chains, hair, wigs, braids, henna, PILES of gold jewellery and gems everywhere! But what else would you expect when you're working with Isolated Heroes?!

(Kirstin Kerr)

I love working with Sam because I can really just do ANYTHING I want, it really was amazing to see everyone come together with the same vision and step into her "magic pony land brain" (as she so perfectly called it in her blog post about the shoot). And we just had so much fun! I created two nail sets for the day and wanted them to be really over the top. The first set were black with big, glittery, gold letters, IH for ISOLATED HEROES! I Stuck a big ying-yang button I found on one thumb and a big gold peace sign from a necklace on the other. The right hand had all the fingers connected by a chain and the left just had a chain running from the ring finger to the pinky (attached by a safety pin!). The second set was white and I used party confetti (smiley faces and baby bottles) and lovely iridescent gems to create a more feminine set. I connected the ring and pinkie fingers with a chain and attached some smiley faces to it. I really just wanted the sets to look thrown together, the whole theme of the shoot was so over the top that I just wanted it to look like Ruta and Stevie had done it themselves and stuck on anything they could find.

There was no make-up artist so like 8 of us pitched in and decorated Ruta ans Stevie with Henna (I'm sure Sam's AWA faces will replace traditional designs from now on), while Sam decorated their eyebrows with pom poms and Lou stuck smiley face stickers to Stevie's face as well as working her magic with some colourful wigs and hair pieces!