Art History & Nails: St. Mark's The Spot from the OPI Venice Collection

It is almost the weekend, are you ready?   This Thursday (night) brings the return of my Art History & Nails series! You may have seen the collection at your local Ulta, but in case you haven't, OPI has released a gorgeous new collection for Fall inspired by Venice.  I have picked up a few shades and plan on getting a few more, but the one I want to show you today is one of the limited edition shades. I am not sure exactly what that means in OPI world...but I did notice my Ulta display only had 3 each of the limited shades and 8 each of the other shades. They aren't more expensive or anything but if you want this shade, I suggest you hurry!   *(Update as of editing this post right before posting my Ulta sold out of this shade. RUN)*

This shade is very difficult to capture, so many of my pictures will have flash. This is OPI's St. Mark's The Spot ($9.50). It is a beautiful royal blue shimmer and it definitely needs two coats to get the perfect depth and richness. Dry time is average and I can get 6 days with minimum tip wear.  

  Now, having been to the Piazza San Marco (just the fancy Italian way of saying St. Mark's Square), I can say that this blue not only reminds me of the brilliant sky above the square but also of the water that floods in when the tide is high, and the beautiful lapis found in the church and the Doge's palace, which border the square.  

  This picture is from my Venice trip. Isn't the sky pretty? I spent a lot of time in this piazza and have many fond memories and stories, including eating some of the best gelato of my life while looking at this view.   

  This is a picture of the polish without flash. The shimmer isn't as apparent but it is still gorgeous! While not a complete Art History lesson with this particular post, Venice is a beautiful place full of art and culture and I am very glad to have had the opportunity to visit as well as glad that OPI has made a collection that is giving me such warm and fuzzy feelings while still being so on trend for Fall. What do you think of this color? Will you be picking up any of the shades from this collection?

Art History & Nails: Malevich

Hey everyone! 

I have something a little bit different for you today. Once upon a time long ago I started a nail blog called Impressionist Nails to coincide with PrettyPanda. I used to do my nails a lot more, but with grad school, I made PrettyPanda the priority when I could update. I've decided to do posts here on nail looks with the premise that I had planned for my nail blog: blog about nail looks and art history together. Having the seven million blogs I do is getting a bit much (exaggeration, but seriously though).

Art is something I am very passionate about. I just finished my Master's in Art Business and I look at my nails as mini-canvases when I have the time to paint them/wrap them/etc. So these posts will be a little mini art history lesson mixed with a nail look!

 My look this week is using nail wraps from SCRATCH. They started as a Kickstarter that turned into a cool nail biz and my brother introduced me to them because he is always on Kickstarter, so they are special to me.

This pattern is currently unavailable (okay, so I may hoard nail wraps until they are discontinued. It is an issue, I know), but easy to recreate with some striping tape and nail polish. Or you can pick up one of their other cool wraps! They often have sales and I like these wraps a lot! Instead of filing off the edges you can literally just pinch the excess off and it looks like the above. I think I did a decent job considering nail wraps are usually unbearable to apply. These took me all of ten minutes. Slap on a top coat and mine lasted for five days with no imperfections. 

 

After wearing these for a day, they began to remind me of cubist/abstract art, so I set about finding a bit of inspiration for this post. It didn't take long for Kazimir Malevich to pop into my mind. I saw an exhibit of his in London and the geometric shapes and minimalism stuck with me.

Suprematism with Blue Triangle and Black Square. Kazimir Malevich. 1915. Oil on canvas. 66.5 x 57 cm. Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands. 

Above is a typical Suprematist work for Malevich. Simple shapes, lots of blue, black, and white. Although there is a bit of Mondrian in the design of the nail wraps, I am focusing on the blue/black motif. 

Suprematism is an art movement founded by Malevich that focuses on geometric shapes and a limited color palette that is supposed to represent the purity of how it feels to create art instead of the actual drawing of natural or man-made objects.

Bring that up in conversation and see how fancy you look.

And that, Pandas, is your very mini art history tid-bit and a peep at my nail look this week. Cheerio!

That Pop Art Vibe with Animated Nails

I've been seeing this trend done a lot in the nail blog world, so I decided to give it a try over at my nail blog, Impressionist Nails.  

 I loved the way they turned out, and if you want a step-by-step tutorial and a little art history about pop art, head on over to my other blog! 

That Pop Art Vibe with Animated Nails

I've been seeing this trend done a lot in the nail blog world, so I decided to give it a try over at my nail blog, Impressionist Nails.  

  I loved the way they turned out, and if you want a step-by-step tutorial and a little art history about pop art, head on over to my other blog!