ART: Lauren Baker

Hello All, 

As I mentioned in my first 'ART' port, which you can read here, I wanted to make there ART posts fairly regular. With work & attempting to have a social life, getting to galleries / exhibitions gets pushed back a bit. 

However, Millie, from She Hearts The High Street, my fellow skull enthusiast, introduced me to Lauren Baker.

  

Initially, I fell in love with her custom made skulls. Throughout this year, she had been running Skull Workshops, in which you could chose, decorate & take home your very own skull! Unfortunately I missed out :( But here are a selection of my favourite skulls, more can be found here

Fred

Frank & Frankie

Rose

But, since hearing about her, I have become incredibly interested in her art work. Although the skulls remain my favourite, I really like the Mosaic's especially in the cape collaborations with fashion label Velevet Johnstone & shoe collaboration with Joanne Stoker

photograph by Neil Collins

Photographed by Sacha Rainbow

Another thing I really like about art is art for a cause. Of course, creativity for creativities sake is beautiful & I find it admirable when people create such moving pieces. However, combining a talent with a good cause is so amazing. Lauren Baker created the below, crystal encrusted Tiger head for Save The Tigers

'Baker's most intricate work; The Crystal Tiger is a life-size tiger head sculpture encrusted with 35,000 Swarovski crystals. World-renowned luxury shoe designer Jimmy Choo endorsed and unveiled The Crystal Tiger at St Pancras Renaissance Hotel. The artwork, which was modeled by trend-setting actress Jaime Winstone, fetched £10.5k at auction on 21st March 2013 for the tiger conservation charity Save Wild Tigers. '

You may already know that I love cats, sometimes I genuinely think they are better than people! I went to ZSL recently, & fell in love with the new tiger section. Also, I actually shed a little tear when I found out the baby tiger cub drowned. So the fact Lauren has used her amazing talents to support a cause I feel strongly about, appealed to me even more!

I hope that in the future she will be hosting more Skull Workshops as I would love to go to one!

Manicure Monday: Leather effect & Skulls

Hello all!

Another Monday, another manicure! This week I used the Nails Inc 'Bling It On, Leather and Skulls' kit & I love them!

I was sent this kit and it is so me! The polish itself is a really interesting texture and its matte grainy effect is really cool on its own. But I thought I would try the skull embellishments too. The set comes with glue so it's so simple to create. I put a skull in each middle finger. I'd suggest taking the glue out with you in case they fall off as mine did in the night.

I've used these once before and I looked after them so you definitely can reuse them. If I can keep these tiny embellishments safe then anyone can!

In other news, I finally have an iPhone! With this comes better pictures and....instagram. I am so excited about getting instagram.Please follow me: jadorejadex.
If you do so, you'll get a preview of my new hair too, post coming soon. I am a red head again!

Manicure Monday: Bling it on Rebel!

Hello all.

Another Monday, another manicure! I was kindly sent the 'Bling it on Rebel' kit by Nails Inc recently and couldn't wait to try it! As it was so cool, I wanted to save it for a special occasion, so with the #LDNBloggersParty on Saturday (you can see my write up of this here) I thought that I would do some cool nail art with this kit.

So in the kit you get a full sized 'Shoreditch Lane' polish, which is a deep burgundy, with a definite purple base, polish that dry to the leather effect. You also receive 4 skull and cross-bone embellishments, 10 square based stud embellishments and several small swarovski crystals. You also are provided with 2 orange sticks and glue for the embellishments. This means you can get super creative with this little kit as everything is provided and the skulls and studs are perfectly my style!

So here is what I created with the kit, please bare in mind that it was my first attempt!

 

Please excuse my long, uber boney claw-like fingers!

So on my thumbs I stuck 2 of the skull and crossbones on, which was so fun as every time I texted, I could see them! Then on my middle fingers I placed a stud, and on my pinkie's a black crystal. I know I will become more creative with the pattern I go for in future, but for a first attempt, I was very happy!

I plan to use 3-4 studs on my middle finger next time in a vertical row, I think it would look so good! 

I was also sent the black leather and skull set, so keep a look out for that in the next few Manicure Monday's!