amanda: valentine's day fun

I didn't get any comments about how your Valentine's Day went.. so here's mine:

First, I had to have some fun with my nails ;)

I just used a peach and nude base color alternatively on my nails. French tipped them with a very sparkly pink polish. Then drew in two tiny hearts on two fingers.

 Even though I didn't get to celebrate Valentine's this year, but at least looking down at my fingers made me smile!

I'm pretty sure you guys had a better valentine's compared to mine cause I worked at school until 9:30pm and only had a starbucks green tea and a banana for dinner that night. :(

I was working on draping this cowl top at school... 

It got pretty frustrating because the fabric was so slippery and I was so tired from a whole day of classes. But here's the finished project.. not the best work I've done, but I know what went wrong and will try to improve next time!

Here's my dolled up fingers journaling on Feb. 15th~ 

I was reflecting upon the fact that I'm not a big fan of this occasion but found it awfully hard not to be affected when everywhere I went, there were flowers, chocolates, teddy bears, and a lot of happy couples. 

 But like I said on twitter: 

"Valentine's day is great for those who usually have no time to love. But for those who love everyday, it's just like any other day."

I know I'm loved. What about you?

Now it's YOUR turn to tell me about your Valentine's!!

GO!

amanda: beautyfull valentine's day

February sure seems like a very eventful month here in New York. Fashion Week just began and Valentine's Day is just around the corner.

Interestingly enough, laura and I are both going to be away from our special someones and on our own for Feb. 14~ But that shouldn't stop us (or you) from dressing up for the occasion!
So I thought I'd share a few beautyfull things that help set the mood for Valentine's Day. Enjoy :)

I love this makeup look by Michelle Phan - even though it was from 3 years ago! If you don't usually wear pink eyeshadows, give it a try this valentine's~

Those of you who know me, I love nail art - but unfortunately pretty lazy to do really complicated designs. There are tons of Valentine's-themed nail art tutorials. I think I like this one cause it's cute but kinda creepy at the same time.. haha.



Well, have a BEAUTYFULL Valentine's Day!
Leave a comment if you tried anything posted and tell us about how you are spending Valentine's :)

amanda: intro to jewellery design

I apologize for the late post! But here's my take on designing rings.:)

After years of shopping for rings and imagining what rings I'd love to have, I decided to finally take an actual jewellery design course at my school.

 To start the design process, it is necessary to sketch out your ideas from various views so that when you are to make it, you will be clear about all angles of the design.

Then you make a wax mold of the design by sawing and filing a clump of casting wax. When you like what you have, you bring it to get it casted into your choice of silver, yellow brass, white brass, etc.

After you pick up the casted ring, you can see that there's a piece of brass sticking out. This needs to be sawed off carefully.

Then you must polish the ring with these sanding wheels to get all the debris off and see the brass shine through. :)

These tools are found only in a jewellery design studio so I can only work on my jewellery at the school's studio.

After hours and hours of hard work.. here's the finished product!

I personally like simple but edgy ring designs. This simple geometric ring is my very first attempt at jewellery design. I also casted it in white brass! How much would you be willing to pay for a brass ring like this one? 

Btw, this is my professor's website: http://www.geoffreygood.com/

Check out his stuff - it's pretty awesome!

laura: cute home-made rings

Awhile ago, I posted a "tutorial" on my personal blog on how to make rings out of wire + fabric. This was just a cheap random project that I thought of since I had some wire and fabric at home... and was in a crafty mood. But Amanda is the one who is learning about jewelry-making in her design classes so I hope she'll be able to share some tips on how to ACTUALLY make REAL jewelry one of these days. haha.. but for now, you will have to settle for my home-made version here...

For the full tutorial on how to make these, click HERE!

The LBD: Will we ever get tired of black?

From as far back as I can remember, I knew that the Little Black Dress was the "it" item in every girl's closet. Maybe it was the influence of Spice Girls, where Posh Spice (Victoria Beckham) would have all these different variations of the same LBD. I have noticed that I go through these certain color phases throughout my life. For example, I have been in this navy phase for quite a few years now, and I am getting sick of it. However, black never grows old on me. Black is the type of color that shouldn't even be called a color. But it exudes such power and sophistication that no woman can refuse.

Dresses by Zac Posen 

What are your views on the LBD? Do you think you'll ever get sick of the color black? Or are you one of those rare people that just refuse to wear black? We love reading your comments, so please leave us some! 

amanda: rainy days don't have to be boring

The reason why I haven't been posting in awhile is because I've been so swamped with projects (and still am).. and this new york weather is not helping. One day it's pouring, the next day it's warm sunny, then it's cold and cloudy.. it's completely unpredictable!

I just wanted to share with you about how I like to dress on rainy days.

I don't have hunter boots like every other new yorker, but I do love using boots to pull my whole outfit together.

I don't know about you, but I just love to make rainy days more interesting by wearing a fun pair of tights. Did I ever mention I had a little obsession with tights? 

For me, rainy days usually mean a comfortable pair of boots, interesting tights, and some lace. Here is only a quick snapshot of what I wore today. My knee-high suede boots, my houndstooth tights (current favorite), my lace slip, and a grey shirt dress.

Check out this awesome slideshow of this year's best tights for the fall! It makes me want to shop for more tights! :)

What do YOU wear on a rainy day? Leave us a comment below!

laura: DIY Ring Box!

I've been super busy lately with my new job (and NEW LIFE in Hong Kong) haha... which is SO different from Canada, so apologies for COMPLETELY lacking in posts... however, I see Amanda has been doing an excellent job of updating everyone on her life in New York, so I'll do my part and show you a little DIY craft that I actually blogged about on my personal blog, but since it's relevant to style and fashion, I'll post it here as well =) Anyway, here it is:

I think many of you know that I love to wear rings. The majority of my rings are back in Canada, but I am starting to breed a little collection here as well (yes... breed...). Most of these are either made (from this post here) or bought for $1 or 2 in Hong Kong. Since they're so cheap, I didn't want to keep them all in a pile just in case they started rusting. I decided to find an effective and cheap way to store my rings (and to prevent me from always losing them too)... 

 I bought a box that I liked...

...and some peach-coloured felt.

It's easier if your piece of felt is cut into one long strip. My strip of felt was wider than the box I bought, so I simply took the excess on the sides, and folded them in so that the felt strip would fit perfectly into the box. Then I basically folded the strip of felt, accordion-style, until I had folds (like the ones below).

At this point, you could use a glue gun or sew a few reinforcing threads into your accordion shape to prevent it from coming apart, but I didn't bother. The key thing is just to make sure your "felt accordion" is dense and packed tightly together, because if it's too loose, your rings will just fall down the cracks. Anyway, all I did was just stuff my felt accordion into the box and make sure it fit snugly. Then I put all my rings in, and there you go! A cheap ring box!

Now I have no excuse to lose my rings. 

I really like this idea because you can totally stylize your ring box any way you want. If you try this, I want to see what kind of box you choose and what colour felt you use! I'm sure it would look totally different from mine. Anyway, hope you like this quick craft idea! :)