Perfect Winter Polishes

I used to be obsessed with painting my nails with wacky intricate designs which you can actually see some here on my nail art tumblr. I used to spend every sunday night painting a new design for the new week but since starting uni I've gotten less and less interested and it's gotten to the point where I don't actually paint my nails all that much. However I still love having my nails painted I just don't have the time, so when I do end up painting them it's even more fulfilling! A lot of the northern hemisphere are blogging about their favourite spring/summer polishes and it's just making me want to pull out my favourite pastel teal polish but it's just not right. My collection (check it out here) is mainly filled with colours like the pastel teal that suit spring and summer and although I have a couple of khaki greens and greys I was really happy to recently upgrade my collection with these two beauties. 

I won Essie's 'The Perfect Cover Up' on a Facebook competition for Hannah's blog A Lovely Look and was really excited to receive it and finally paint my nails again. A lovely greeny grey colour that's a perfect autumn/winter colour. I also picked up this Sally Hansen polish in 'Jungle Gem' for a whole $3.50 from Farmers, I was 'umming and arring' about whether to get it or not for $5 and mum pushed me into it and as it turned out even cheaper I'm glad she did! A little less grey than the Essie polish it's still a really nice autumn/winter colour. 
I don't really do reds and pinks with nail polish so a gorgeous oxblood colour isn't really my thing so it was great to get these two for my collection especially as they're nothing like what I already have. 
Question is which one do I use first?! No seriously tell me!

What's your favourite autumn winter nail colour? Is there one colour you wear the entire 6 months of the year as soon as it's deemed cold enough?

It's time to get personal

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6  ~ All images from Pinterest.

So for lucky people like me who don't have exams at university, we have six weeks off in the middle of the year. While we could spend it sitting on our arses watching episode after episode of Game of Thrones for the fifth time, which I probably will end up doing despite this post, we could also use it as a time for personal projects. Doing a design degree you're often restricted throughout term time to specific briefs and while you can stretch them to suit your style most often they're not really what you had in mind when you wanted to become a designer. So I've done the Game of Thrones arse sitting for the first week but I've also been scrolling Pinterest which has given me so much motivation and creativity to start some projects over the rest of the holidays. 

Create some greeting cards. 
and also hopefully start selling them. I need to work on my watercolour typography to digital skills a wee bit more first but keep your eyes peeled. 

Put up a print wall. 
I have prints, I have frames for them, I have a blank wall... now all I need are nails to put them up. Of course they'll have to be arranged nicely and all but it's simple right? 

Do some freelance. 
Make some fancy new logos for someone, or blog banners, or blog sidebar icons, or anything. Wink wink readers. 

Paint more watercolour. 
Just do more, practice makes perfect and I'm far from perfect. Maybe we'll start with flowers, I found a great tutorial for flowers so let's start there and practice my flower arranging. 

Spend more time on the blog. 
Tweaking background things, changing images, upgrading things. Sorting out things I'm not happy with and frankly just giving Sofilly some attention it hasn't really gotten these past few months while I've been working on uni projects. 

Technically if you want to get picky I could do most of these while doing the Game of Thrones arse sitting but you get the idea. Let's just spend some time with my craft and creativity and hopefully make myself even better for next semester! 

Artist Attraction #7 | Jasmine Dowling

I've mentioned her before in previous posts like this one here but I thought this talent deserved her own post. Australian graphic designer Jasmine Dowling is one of my favourite artists, I'm in love with her lettering. Just look at it all it's so preeeetty!

Her and a couple of other similar artist influence my own watercolour typography that's featured here occasionally. I've been wanting to get more into it and hopefully start up a collection of greeting cards that I've been brainstorming recently. She sells some of her work as prints, pillowcases and tote bags. She's worked with some major companies such as Maybelline and creates marvellous work for each and every one of them. I do have a soft spot for some of her foil designs but the simple black ink designs are truely the best. Can't wait til I'm no longer a student and earning enough to spend money on things that aren't food and buy some of her prints but until then I shall create my own and cry that they aren't as good!

You can find her work on her website here or check out her blog and instagram! 

Experimentation

I've been creating things!! I thought while I was away at my boyfriends house and not being able to blog a lot I would show you some stuff I've been working on for the past two weeks since I had the photos with me. I'm currently working on a few minor projects including creating a few logos for myself and others, and experimenting with watercolour to hopefully improve my skills enough to actually sell things. 

the art essentials

With uni over and the moving things slowly coming together I've been spending a lot of time indoors having caught a pretty decent flu. I haven't got the greatest luck at the moment oops hopefully things turn out good once this flu is over seen as I've had it for a week now. Anyways while chilling at the new house I've been doing some arty things of my own now uni's over and thought I'd share my favourite products at the moment. 

Pens: Copic Multiliner / ZIG Drawing Pen / Artline / Uniball 

I get a variety of brands for various different tasks however I make sure to get waterproof inks so I can use them alongside the watercolour. I tend to use 0.3 and 0.1 points a lot however I do also use a variety of .1 .2 .3 .5 and .8's. 

Brush Pens: Tombow Dual Pen

Seriously this is the best pen for lettering and I've been hunting my local art shops for ages for the Black one to return to stock! I've used a fair few brands of brush pens but Tombow has got to be the best, I really recommend it. 

Pencils:  Uni Shalaku 0.5 / WHSmiths basic pencil 4B

I normally prefer 2B's to be perfectly honest but this little WHS 4B has come a long way with me, I've had it for years as you can probably tell from the bite marks... 

Erasers: Uni Auto Eraser 

I love this pencil type eraser as it's great for getting rid of small extra lines in lettering and illustrations. I do also use a large regular eraser if needed but mostly this one. 

Brushes: Winsor and Newton portable paintbrush / Royal Langnickel Aqua-Flo brush

I love the brush included in the palette it's perfect and portable. The waterbrush I've only had for a week or so but so far am liking it enough to include in here. I may do a review further down the line once I've used it enough as it's not a common art product really.  

Palettes: Winsor and Newton watercolours 

These beauties are amazing I highly recommend them over the cheaper brands, they're a little bit more expensive but worth it. I do have one block of a Pebeo watercolour purely as I wasn't keen on one of the yellows included and thought I would use another blue much more. It's not as good as it's fellow blocks but at least I use it. (I even cleaned it for you guys, feel special). 

Instaluvin

So that thing I mentioned about posting lots due to the fact that I've finished uni is a lie. I still currently have two projects to finish even though classes have finished and one is a quick finish and the other is around 2 weeks away. However that's not the main reason, the fact that I'm moving house on Saturday is. I've mentioned this before so I wont go into it but I'm really excited and all the packing, sorting and getting rid of my room in my present apartment is taking up so much time. On with the post!I've recently gotten back into the habit of using Instagram for more than just posting photos and craving likes and follows. I'm actually following more and more people and enjoying all their posts at least like 10 times a day, it's getting a bit of an addiction. [in order from left to right, top to bottom.]

jasminedowling: Jasmine was one of the first blogs I started to follow after my return to Instagram. I really love her style and designs, especially her work with the gold foil lettering gimme all that! Her other lifestyle type photos are composed really well and pretty. 

dinotomic: I've been following him for quite a while and can I just say go there right now and look at his flippin' amazing drawings, thats just promarkers and pencil crayons right there look! (and then come back here after following him please).

alittleopulent: Being an online magazine A Little Opulent posts photos of their latest articles and reviews and although I don't read the magazine I follow a few of their illustrators and writers as well. They post a nice mix of things from decor and design to make up and fashion. 

emmabone3: Now Emma actually goes to my uni and I found through Facebook page surfing. Her lettering style is amazing and I want it so much - I've even had planned an artist review blog post on her because I love her work so much. 

talesatsea: Sarah's Instagram I also found through her type but she posts so much more than just type; she posts lots of everyday lifestyle posts including photos of her newly gorgeous pink hair. 

nectarandstone: Yay baking and food! Caroline makes the best desserts and chocolate you could only dream about - unless you live in Australia you lucky buggers! She does everything from chocolate pyramids and macarons to cookies and cake. I actually almost forgot to include this after not being able to decide what photo to put on as they're all so amazing. 

abbysy: I only came across Abby's Instagram a few days ago but after scrolling through her page for hours I concluded it was now one of my favourite accounts. All of her photos are beautifully presented and she features a lot of her watercolour work which I pray that I can get as good as her some day.

nikkimcwilliams: Holy crap I have an Instagram that's not type? Wow! Nikki's Instagram is full of her fabulous creations - biscuit themed home accessories, mainly pillows which I want one of each please Santa. She also recently got a new little cat Frankie who is just adorable and I crave a kitten every time I see him. 

fromrosesxo: The editor of A Little Opulent, Rebecca, has a gorgeous Instagram. Mainly filled with lifestyle sort of photos filled with design, fashion, food and her gorgeous pup Bella. If I can get my instagram to this level I would be so flipping happy! 

Artist Attraction #3 | Dawn Tan

I came across this artist whilst browsing Pintrest a while ago and ended up spending quite a while browsing her various pieces. After coming across her again on Tumblr I thought I might include a little post about her work on the blog. Dawn Tan lives in Australia and specialises mainly in landscapes, food and plants, her art is laid back and fun to look at. I wish I had the confidence she has with watercolour. I think she's been one of my latest inspirations to my work especially as I discovered her shortly before purchasing my first watercolour palette set. I wonder if you could actually make what she's drawn just from seeing the ingredients, the pieces are really unique and I really wish I could have one for my room! Even just the soy bread and smoothie piece, which shows how easy her inspiration comes to her - just from breakfast. I think from looking at her architecture pieces that the year 10 art class at my school studied her, that's a bit freaky coming across the actual artist years later!    

Greetings loved ones

Just a few little greeting card pieces I've produced the last week, really simple and quirky x