Skulloctopus From Outer Space

Plaseebo is at it again with a couple of wonderful new custom skulloctopus figures.  Bob Conge is the creator of these unique creatures using glass eyes, a clear vinyl head filled with cosmic debris floating in space slime illuminated by an internal motion activated color changing LED unit.  I love the bright ideas that these little critters give me.  These are as comical as they are creative.  Thanks for sharing them, Bob!

Natural Selection: Sneak Preview

Here's a sneak preview of my upcoming solo exhibition Natural Selection, opening October 17 at Krause Gallery in NYC. More info to come soon...

Skull Pillow

Danijela Tanaskovic created this skull pillow. I'm a big fan of embroidery and love seeing how people use this classic medium to create artwork. The skull is a fantastic example of anatomy and stitches. The addition of the flowers adds a great textural element for this decorative pillow. The design appears simple, but has a strong impact. I'd love to see more of Danijela's work!

Birthday Skull

freakSTATIC made this card for their mother's birthday. They explained, "It went down really well, she used to sing the Birthday Dirge to us when we were small!" I has to look up this "Birthday Dirge" song for the message on the card to make any sense. Now, I'm hooked. You'll have to give it a listen. It's not a normal birthday song, but for us skull loving people, it's appropriate. I need someone to sing this to me on my next birthday.

Mosaic Skull

This flat faced skull is the handy work of Glen Francis aka - "Mount Rockula" from Victoria, BC, Canada.  Placed together like the jagged pieces of our own skulls and held together with a "skin" of grout.  I only wish we could see the rest of the work that this little fella gets to look at everyday.  Thanks for sharing your skull with us, Glen!

31 Day Nail Art Challenge - Day 12: Stripes

I can't believe we're already on day 12 of this challenge! I'm so happy that Meghan and I are sticking with this - I'm still really loving this challenge :) 

For today's stripes theme, I thought about doing something complex with striping tape and going crazy, but in the end, I settled on classic vertical stripes. I recently bought the China Glaze Avant Garden collection and I've kind of been obsessing over the colors since I got them. I used 38 strips of striping tape for this hand alone and I felt my eye start to twitch in frustration after about the 12th strip being placed on my nail! How is it that the tape suddenly acquired a magnetic attraction to my nails for this mani!? 

I don't normally like vertical stripes on myself, but I think I like how these turned out. They sort of remind me of Candy Striper stripes! The colors are subtle enough that it still feels "right" if you will. I'm so relieved that there was little to no bleeding of the colors in the stripes. My secret for fixing any bleeding under the tape is to use a top coat over your base color. This lets you use a brush and some acetone to carefully remove any misplaced nail art polish without taking up the base polish and having to restart. 

I used 7 China Glaze polishes for this look and I'll share them from the darkest/brightest pink up to the darkest blue/purple stripe. 

Base Color - Keep Calm, Paint on

Brightest/Darkest Pink - Passion for Petals

Life is Rosy

Pink-ie Promise

Tart-y For the Party

Fade into Hue

Fancy Pants

I really love these colors together and while this is a super simple look, it took me a long while to get my tape where I wanted it. How do you guys feel about major tape manis like this? Worth it or would you rather forgo the insipid task of taping this much and attempt some freehand? ;) 

Happy Polishing! :) 

An InLinkz Link-up

Best Twin Nails with Amber of LeftCoastLacquerista!

Hello my dears! I hope your Tuesday is going fabulously :) Today I've got a quick post about a fun trend going in the Instagram community! Bestie Twin Nails (identified with the hashtag #bestietwinnails) is when 2 nail art fiends collaborate and come up with a nail art concept that both artists complete. I've done a few of them over the past month or so and this will be the second one I complete with Amber of Left Coast Lacquerista :) We decided on dream catcher nails and I am just in love with what we came up with! I think these are both so cute! 

Here is my version: 

 And here is Amber's version - aren't the cute!

I used OPI's My Vampire is Buff as my base color, black and white acrylic for the dream catcher and accents, and the pink is China Glaze's Life is Rosy. I used a new Winstonia brush for this look and I am pleasantly surprised with the quality of the brushes from them! I will have a full review of them up soon :) 

Happy Polishing! :)