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Manicure Monday: Leopard Nails with Sam and Syl!

LuLu*s ! — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 12:00:00 +0000

Leopard print. Whether you wear it like a neutral or think it’s for tacky cougars, you just know it’s coming back in style every fall. It’s been done in every colourway but the classic natural leopard keeps coming back. We’re happy to be a part of Wild Week here on the LuLu*s blog & we’re gonna show you how easy it can be to do a classic leopard look on your nails!

Here’s what we’re going for:

What you’ll need:

- yellow base coat

- brown colour for spots

- a black nail art pen

- quick dry top coat

Start with a few coats of your base colour in yellow. If you’re going for a modern leopard, you can go for an alternate base coat colour like white or grey!

Use your brown colour and draw some random spots onto each nail. You can just use the brush applicator from the bottle because it doesn’t matter if the spots are mis-shapen or imperfect!

Then take your black nail art pen and draw haphazard circles around each spot. Make it a sloppy circle and don’t connect it all the way around. Having a few gaps makes it more leopard-spot-like. Then fill in some gaps with small black spots.

Do the same to the rest of the spots on your nails & then top coat!

…and there you have it! I ended up deciding to add an accent nail to break up all the leopard and painted one nail brown

So how are you ladies gonna show your wild side this week?

The post Manicure Monday: Leopard Nails with Sam and Syl! appeared first on Lulus.com Fashion Blog.

Welcome to Wild Week!

LuLu*s ! — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 08:00:00 +0000

We are absolutely obsessed with leopard. We’re seeing it everywhere for fall and we’re loving it. So we decided to dedicate a week to it, filled with contests, DIYS, outfit inspirations, and more! Below you can get the low down on the awesone contests we are throwing through our blog and Pinterest!

PINTEREST

BLOG CONTEST

The Details:

1. Comment on any of our Wild Week blog posts to enter! Entries begin Monday, October 1st at 8am PST.

2. Be sure to leave your email at the bottom of your comment!

3. A winner will be randomly selected and contacted via email on Saturday, October 6th.

Prize:

$50 giftcard to LuLu*s

Deadline:

The contest will end Friday, October 5th at 5pm PST

Welcome to Wild Week!

xoxo

The post Welcome to Wild Week! appeared first on Lulus.com Fashion Blog.

Name the Dress Contest #120

LuLu*s ! — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

The contest has ended. Be sure to enter again next week!

Winning Dress Name: Chrome Sweet Chrome

Winner: Gina

The post Name the Dress Contest #120 appeared first on Lulus.com Fashion Blog.

DIY: Pastel Hair with Nymphette!

LuLu*s ! — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 12:00:00 +0000

Pastel hair has been all the rage lately but have you ever wondered how to get luscious cotton candy colored locks on your own? The thing about pastel hair dye is it really doesn’t exist but with a couple easy steps you are on your way to the perfect hue of lilac or pale blue.

Decide what pastel shade or shades you want your hair to be. This is important because you need to purchase your color and more importantly prep your hair for coloring. Your hair will need to be a very pale yellow to almost white depending on what shade you want to go. Keep in mind the yellow in your hair will peak through since pastels are so pale. Certain colors won’t be affected by the yellow tones in your hair as much as others. For example, I have gone a pale pink while a pale yellow with no issues but if I wanted to go a pale blue it would turn a green tone. Most of us will have to bleach and tone our hair in order to get the ideal shade to ensure the perfect pastel tresses. This will also work on high quality human hair blonde extensions.

Mix your color. You are going to need conditioner, which is going to dilute your dye. Make sure the dye you purchase is a semi-permanent formula which most unnatural color dyes are. They are usually vegetable based dyes and can be diluted with regular hair conditioner. I am using Special Effects Sonic Green. Keep in mind that although these dyes are semi-permanent, they may stain your hair.

The conditioner you use doesn’t really matter but I do like to make sure it is white. It helps you gauge the color a lot easier than a colored conditioner. I also like to start with a generous amount of conditioner and add dye to it instead of the other way around. I feel I have more control of the color this way. You want to mix more color than you think you’ll need to avoid running out of color and remixing more color which might not match exactly.

Start by adding a little bit of dye to your conditioner and mix it thoroughly with a tint brush. You can pick this up very easily at Sally’s Beauty Supply or any other beauty supply.

You want to keep adding until you get to about 1 or 2 shades darker than your desired shade. I went about 3 shades darker because I have some yellow tones that need to be covered up.

Apply haircolor. Start applying your color to your hair. I like using my bare hands because the dye is so diluted now that it won’t stain my hands. I really like to get in there and massage the color into the hair. Apply liberally until your hair is saturated. I put on a disposable shower cap that I purchase for really cheap at the beauty supply to keep my hair out of the way while I wait for the color to process. The beautiful thing about using a vegetable dye is that it isn’t damaging and there is no maximum amount of time that you can leave it in your hair. In fact, I say the longer the better especially with the conditioner. I have found the longer I’ve let my color stay on, the longer it lasts. I keep the dye in my hair for as long as I have time for (or can tolerate) but I try to aim for at least 2 hours.

Wash haircolor out. I always wash my hair with cold water when my hair is an unnatural color. This prevents excess bleeding. I find pastels bleed way less than full strength bright colors so washing with cold water isn’t as important here but it’s up to you. I don’t usually shampoo after washing out the color. I like to give the color a couple days to penetrate my hair.

And here’s how my hair turned out!

I love contrasting my pastel hair with something bright or neon just like I do with my clothing. Sometimes it’s a bright lipstick and other times it’s a neon statement shoe or blazer. Here I am wearing the Notchy or Nice Chartreuse Blazer from Lulu’s.

I love the pastel hair trend and I hope you guys will rock this look now too!

Love this blog? Check out more of radness over at Nymphette’s blog!

The post DIY: Pastel Hair with Nymphette! appeared first on Lulus.com Fashion Blog.

Manicure Monday: Toile de Jouy Nails with Sam and Syl!

LuLu*s ! — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 12:00:00 +0000

Hey ladies,

We were on a quick trip to New York City last week for Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week writing some articles for Chictopia and inspiration was all around us! We were able to attend over a dozen fashion shows and even though it’s not even Fall yet, we’re excited for the Spring trends that we see rolling out. One of my favourite prints ever is the elegant French classic, Toile de Jouy, and it was used generously in the Ruffian Spring/Summer 2013 collection!

Here’s our inspiration:

runway photos from Style.com

What you’ll need:
- white base coat
- konad nail stamping kit: an image plate (m71), stamper and scraper
- blue konad special polish
- nail polish remover
- quick dry top coat

Start with a few coats of your base colour and don’t worry if the coverage isn’t the greatest, it mostly gets covered anyway. My white polish is pretty chunky, so it looks ridgy but it doesn’t matter too much.

We’ve covered the whole nail stamping thing in our Lace Nails Tutorial, but I’ll try to explain the steps again if this is your first time seeing stamps! Start with your tools all within close reach. Take the special nail polish and cover the etched design that you want to use with a single coat. Then grab your scraper, apply even pressure while scraping off the excess polish.

As quickly as you can, grab the rubber stamper tool and stamp down onto the design on the plate. You need to move fast just because the thin layer of polish remaining on the plate can dry up in a second!

Once the image is transfered onto the rubber stamp, you just need to roll the stamp onto your nail, pressing down hard so that the entire image transfers to your nail.

Then use some nail polish remover to clean off the excess from the image plate, stamp and scraper and repeat the above steps to cover each of your nails. There will probably be some stamped polish on the sides of your nails but you can just clean it up with some polish remover on a cotton swab.

Top coat and you’re done! This Toile de Jouy look can also pass as a porcelain china effect! Either way, this fresh and dainty look is so eye catching you’ll be sure to get a ton of compliments!

The post Manicure Monday: Toile de Jouy Nails with Sam and Syl! appeared first on Lulus.com Fashion Blog.

Name the Dress Contest #119

LuLu*s ! — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

The contest has ended. Be sure to enter again next week!

Winning Dress Name: Rock-Paper-Glitters

Winner: Tristan

The post Name the Dress Contest #119 appeared first on Lulus.com Fashion Blog.

Name the Dress Contest #118

LuLu*s ! — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

The contest has ended. Be sure to enter again next week!

Winning Dress Name: First In Line

Winner: Jay

The post Name the Dress Contest #118 appeared first on Lulus.com Fashion Blog.

Manicure Monday: Tribal Nails with Syl and Sam

LuLu*s ! — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 12:00:00 +0000

Hey ladies,

This week we’re going to show you how to get the stylish modern “tribal” pattern nails. They look really intricate and detailed but when broken down to some easy steps, you can totally get the look in no time!

Here’s what we’re going for:

What you’ll need:

- white base coat

- white striper

- three contrast colours, I used a teal, orange and yellow.

- a black nail art pen

Start with a few coats of your base colour and don’t worry if the coverage isn’t the greatest, it mostly gets covered anyway.

Next grab your contrast colours and do some random stripes across each nail.

Just keep the colours random and do a coouple of stripes per nail. Wait for these coats to dry completely before continuing!

Then take your nail art pen and draw outlines for each of your horizontal stripes that you drew.

And now the fun part! In between each set of lines, draw any repeated geometric pattern. Some patterns I drew were triangles, zig zags, polka dots and concentric circles. Continue with the rest of your nails and then top coat!

That’s it! Once it’s broken down into a few easy steps, those really intricate nails aren’t actually that difficult to do! They’re a bit time consuming but it’s worth it for the compliments you’ll get!

The post Manicure Monday: Tribal Nails with Syl and Sam appeared first on Lulus.com Fashion Blog.

Name the Dress Contest #117

LuLu*s ! — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 09:00:00 +0000

The contest has ended. Be sure to enter again next week!

Winning Dress Name: Starlet Letter

Winner: Heather

The post Name the Dress Contest #117 appeared first on Lulus.com Fashion Blog.

Manicure Monday: Straw Stamp Nails with Syl and Sam

LuLu*s ! — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 12:00:00 +0000

Hey ladies,

This Monday we’re going to share a really easy stamping technique with you that creates an abstract, colourful pattern. The only tool you’ll need is a drinking straw!

Here’s what we’re going for:

What you’ll need:

- a straw

- white base coat

- other complimentary colours (we used a purple, teal, lime green and hot pink)

- a quick dry top coat

Start with a light base colour on your nails. We used a pearly white but you can use any light colour that constrasts the other colours you’ll be using.

Take one of your contrast colours and drop some onto a scrap piece of paper or some foil. Take your straw and dip it into the nail polish

Then using your straw as a stamp, simply stamp it a few times on each nail. You may have to re-dip the straw every few times you stamp it.

Continue by doing the same with another colour. You don’t have to worry about it being imperfect or messy because it’s an abstract look we’re going for!

Repeat with three or four different colours!

And there you go– an adorably colourful manicure that doesn’t take much effort. It looks so intricate that a few people have been asking if they’re actually nail appliques! Try it out!

The post Manicure Monday: Straw Stamp Nails with Syl and Sam appeared first on Lulus.com Fashion Blog.