Grab your fruity iced beverages (preferably dressed with a little umbrella) and get excited because you're headed for a long lovely holiday weekend. While this weekend marks the official end to summer, you can still liven up the mood with some manicure cheer.

My favorite nail guru, Jin Soon Choi, has created a simple summer manicure featuring a sleek white design with blue and red stripes. This look can easily be achieved on nails of any length and requires no intricate skill or wildly advanced tools (and gives nails a bit of a preppy touch.)

Here's how you can recreate this summer look yourself:


STEP 1 -- As always start with clean polish-free nails. Trim and shape to your liking and apply a base coat of JINsoon Power Coat. A prime base, much like JINsoon, helps coat any ridges or roughness the nail may have and allows colored polish to bond to the nail in a more lasting fashion.

STEP 2 -- For that sleek inverted triangle look, take a striping brush, swipe a bit of JINsoon Doux and draw a V shape tapering in towards the base of the nail (stopping a little before the cuticle). If you have a bit of trouble creating full lines free hand, you can create small dots starting with the end point. Once you've comfortably created a dotted outline, connect each and saturate the shape with Doux.

STEP 3 -- Once completely dried, you can begin painting on the striped designed. Use a clean striping brush and create interchanging lines of blue (JINsoon Cool Blue) and Red (JINsoon Coquette) neatly upon the white design. To save time and trouble, create all the lines of a single color first and go back with the second and final shade in this design.

STEP 4 -- For that clean professional touch, apply a high-shine top coat to nails. JINsoon Top Gloss not only gives nails a super glossy look and locks in the look for longer wear. Please be sure the design has fully dried before you layer a single application of top coat. Applying too early will smear the lines you've worked so hard to create, which is a MAJOR bummer.

Hope you guys try out this festive look this weekend and remember, that silly rule of sporting white after labor day is lie. Wear it as much as you like :)
(But , I must say, white jeans do look completely out of place in the fall!) 

Have a great & safe holiday weekend friends.
For all you sweet souls waiting on the transplant list, may you get lucky this weekend and find your perfect organ matches! 



Image courtesy of JINsoon 

I may have a slight obsession with sunglasses. OK, maybe a bit more than slight. So simple yet so perfect, this small accessory is one you'll never find me without. A simple item meant to protect your delicate eyes from the sun is far more than just that in my world. An  instant pick-me-up on a Plain Jane day or a chic topper to any ensemble, sunglasses are the perfect accessory to tote along on any day.

Whether driving or walking around the city, sunglasses are a must. Sadly, my eyes have become more sensitive over the years and require more coverage. They tear up on beautiful sunny days, windy partly cloudy afternoons and refuse to behave on bright winter mornings (low temps make it so much worse!). I suppose my love for sunglasses stems from necessity.