Last month I was contacted by Hanako to design some nail tips for an upcoming photo-shoot she organised with her cute Japanese team, Chisuna, Yumi and Mamiyo. It was quite exciting for me as the brief allowed me to free-style some insane nail art that I’ve been wanting to do for a while. Hanako came to my nail studio and while we discussed the brief and the possible designs, I fitted her nails with the tips, so I could prep them for the nail editorial shoot beforehand. The brief was quite simple, she was going to be wearing a huge crown of flowers and holding an antique looking umbrella, mixing old with the new, kitschy but refined.
These were the nail tips I had prepped for the shoot consisting of paper flowers, threaded wires and painted white with an acrylic paint. It took me several days to prepare the bits and bobs, since I had to paint them all white and wait in between coats for them to dry. The final assembly took me about 2 hours with a glue gun to complete. The design concept for these nails were inspired by flora and fauna in a pure unblemished world, I had this vision of Hanako being dressed up almost like a forest or a wood sprite or elf, fitting with the kitschy theme of the shoot but I wanted it to have a bit of an edge to it, not vying for attention with the already colourful head piece.
Behind the scenes at the photo-shoot. Forgive me for the terribly grainy photos, the light in the studio was quite dim and I was taking most of these shots with my phone camera. But it gives you a good idea the process of the shoot that day.
I took this picture while the model, Hanako was at rest. Her lacy dress is from whimsical world of Lady Petrova in case you were wondering. You can find her store here and they are having a sale right now if you fancy yourself some end of financial year retail therapy. Because I totally am and it’s been really tough stopping myself since it happens to also be my birthday month and I’m full of excuses trying to splurge on myself.. but not? Okay let’s not go to that dark dark place I like to call ‘click and hover’ (where you click on all the things you want and hover over the checkout button) BUT NOT TO DIGRESS HERE. Moving on!
Photo Credits
Photography: Mamiyo Okuda
Makeup: Yumi Conaghty
Nails: Clara Hwang
Model: Hanako Kajiya
So this is one of the final images which, again due to my incompetence, I mistakenly thought I’d downloaded the share file and had some high-resolution images but I obviously didn’t and ended up with this crummy screenshot. But anyhoo, it’s still beautiful and I thought the vibe of this photo-shoot completely matched what I had previously imagined.
The thing I absolutely love about photo-shoots or nail editorial shoots is that I get to be really creative. I mean I do get to be creative with my day to day clients, but I get to REALLY think out of the box with these shoots. I’m not personally a fan of ‘stack it on and call it art’, I mean its really easy to get a whole bunch of random things, stick it together and call it fantasy nails. But to conceptualise and creatively strategise where you would place the bits and pieces AND make them look good, that’s the hard bit. Preparing for these shoots are fun in that they are not technical and don’t require you to use standard salon techniques to make them last, its one-off and you get to go nuts. What I find hard with shooting editorials is that there is a whole lot of waiting around. You do the nails for 1/2 hr and you wait the next 2 hours for the equipment to be set up and model’s makeup and hair and etc you get the drift. That’s why next time I go to one of these, I’m bringing my knitting project along, I wish I could say it was something more exciting like snorting cocaine or lighting a joint and having a massive rave in the studio but sadly this is not the 70s and NOT an episode out of Absolutely Fabulous which I adore by the way and been watching again.
Enough of my rambling, I would also like to mention the model in this shoot, Hanako K is a very talented girl. She hand crafts カワイイchokers and accessories made of polymer clay. Everything is hand made and you can find her products here.
Go wild!
xx Clara H
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