Now, she’s considered NYC’s most sought after nail artist, with clients as big as Gigi and Bella Hadid, as well as Ariana Grande. And with big names comes a big fashion statement. “I love drama,” said Kawajiri in an interview with WWD.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by 𝙉𝘼𝙄𝙇𝙎 𝘽𝙔 𝙈𝙀𝙄 (@nailsbymei)

According to her, the biggest difference between Japanese and American nail art is that Japanese designs are “more abstract,” whereas her American clients “love to have a theme.” “Even 10 years ago, [Japan was] doing what we are doing in New York: big stones, crazy charms,” she explained. “Young girls save money for their nails instead of eating a lot of food. They wanna be skinny and they wanna have cool nail art.”

Her inspiration comes from the world around her, but she admits she tries no to be too influenced by other nail gurus. “As long as I don’t copy or I don’t watch other people’s Instagram, I’m good,” she stated. “I don’t watch nail Instagrams at all. If you see [something] one time, you have the idea already on the inside of your head. I don’t wanna be like that. I wanna be always original and new.”

Here are some of her fresh designs.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by 𝙉𝘼𝙄𝙇𝙎 𝘽𝙔 𝙈𝙀𝙄 (@nailsbymei)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by 𝙉𝘼𝙄𝙇𝙎 𝘽𝙔 𝙈𝙀𝙄 (@nailsbymei)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by 𝙉𝘼𝙄𝙇𝙎 𝘽𝙔 𝙈𝙀𝙄 (@nailsbymei)

The post This Nail Artist Likes Keeping Things Fresh appeared first on MobiSpirit.

A graduate of Cooper Union, where he studied sculpting and painting, his nail art draws from his artistic background (and, some might argue, doesn’t fall short of being art in and of itself).

“I see a huge relationship formally between my paintings and my nails and they definitely inspire/inform one another,” remarked Alvear in an interview with W Magazine. “I see both my nail sculptures and my paintings as ornaments of sorts: one exists to decorate the hand and the other for space.”

According to him, if it wasn’t for his background in sculpture and painting, his obsession with nail art might not even come to exist, and his nails most probably wouldn’t look as sculptural as they do now. “To be honest I don’t really separate the nails I make from the art I make,” he says. “They are all an extension of me and the nails function almost like a series in a larger body of work.”

And, judging by his impressive following, he’s not the only one to treat his nails as art. Amongst his celebrity clients, you can find A-listers like Rihanna, Erykah Badu, and Rico Nasty. But his Instagram page isn’t for the faint of heart.

The post Juan Alvear’s Nail Art is Not For the Faint of Heart appeared first on MobiSpirit.

Made to look like robotic features, fuzed ontop human hands, his designs incorporate translucent details as well as custom made metal pieces. Matsunaga measures each client’s fingertips in advance, creating the custom pieces with a 3D printer—a painstakingly long process that can take up to three weeks.

Originally from Tokyo, and currently based in New York City, Matsunaga admits it was his sister which inspired him to take the leap of faith into fashion.

“She was working at a nail salon when I graduated from high school and,” he recalled in an interview with Dazed Magazine. “I used to help her prepare nail art samples for the salon at her apartment. Through this, I discovered that nails were my calling, and I enrolled in a nail art school soon after that.”

“My nails usually verge on the futuristic but I am still very interested in traditional methods and want to incorporate them,” he explains. “My philosophy is that detail is everything. There is a direct connection between my work and other cultural Japanese traditions in Japan, and the overarching theme is the careful attention to each stage of a process.”

Follow his Instagram page for more.

The post Robotic Nail Art? We’re All For It appeared first on MobiSpirit.

But it took her a while to come to warm up to the idea that doing someone’s nails might be the equivalent to making art. “I’ve really only just come to terms with the idea that I am an artist,” Woodley admitted in an interview with Dazed and Confused. “Growing up, I would draw a lot but didn’t consider myself an artist. Now that I have come to terms with it, each step of the process feels very emotional.”

Like most nail artists, her obsession with nail polish began at a young age. “My dad took me to get my first manicure when I was seven years old,” she recalled. “I was really obsessed with nail polish and long nails after that, even though I was a nail biter.”

But her ultimate thrust into the fashion scene came after meeting nail guru Bernadette Thompson. “After badgering her on set for hours, I went home to research her,” she says. “It hadn’t dawned on me how much influence she had in the things I loved growing up, not to mention how much money I could actually make doing nails.”

Prepare to be inspired yourself.

The post Leanne Woodley’s Nails are the Meaning of Fresh appeared first on MobiSpirit.

She was getting her master’s degree in sociology when she started uploading pictures of her nail art to Instagram. This soon became a great way to blow off steam after school, so she took a step further and opened a YouTube channel, which she aptly named Simply Nailogical. Funnily enough, she managed to form a small community around her love of nail art. Audiences started gathering to watch her videos where she’d try insane nail polish trends and challenges.

Soon she found herself living two lives: at day, she was a grown-up, serious crime and health statistics analyst, and at night she was a wacky YouTuber with an obsession with holographic nail polish. But it worked! Today she’s a YouTube star with almost 8 million subscribers, and she recently launched her own nail polish line. She’s still living her double life, but she seems to be loving every minute of it.

The post How Nail Art Obsession Launched This Analyst Into YouTube Stardom appeared first on MobiSpirit.

Born in Tokyo and based in LA, she’s won several international competitions and has amassed more than 200k followers on her Instagram page. Inspired by street and high fashion, her nail art caters to the mixed high-brow-low-brow aesthetic, adored by celebrities.

“I wanted to be a painter when I was girl — and now I’m painting on nails!” exclaimed the artist in an interview with Nail Pro. Mixing multiple nail styles, her designs include holographic art, portraits, prints, typography, and even jewelry.

Talking about her work ethics she explained the importance of being prepared. “I truly believe that the basics are the most important part of nail art. And, of course, you can’t forget to put in love,” she said. And talking about her daily routine she added: “I listen to classical music every morning because my mom did the same when I was child. I especially like the piano and horns, and I even took piano and horn lessons.”

Take a look at some of her more elaborate designs in the gallery below.

The post Bling Up Your Nail Game with Britney Tokyo appeared first on MobiSpirit.

According to Washick, she started painting her nails in 2007 after a tough break-up, and shared her nail art through her tongue-in-cheek blog titled “You Don’t Need A Man, You Need A Manicure.”

With love for anything fashion, the nail artist went on to study fashion design in Parsons, which ultimately lead to her current job. “I’ve always been interested in fashion because growing up it was a world unknown to me,” she shared with HYPEBAE. “I wanted to understand why things worked or didn’t, and what warranted a good or bad review. My curiosity lead me to study it seriously and I ended up going to Parsons for fashion design.”

“Prior to Nike, I gravitated towards women’s accessories, and designed them at Coach and Marc Jacobs,” she added. “But I view nails as a built-in accessory so it’s all a part of the fashion world in my eyes. Whether modest or complex, nails are very much a part of the look.”

And talking about the process of designing both nails and sneakers Washick said that “with both nails and sneakers, you’re pushing boundaries within a confined, classic space that’s personal to a lot of people. They’re both blank canvases but you can’t do just anything. It has to be functional to some extent. It’s also a delicate balance of standing out but being relatively easy to wear. And I also love that people feel so passionately about both. They’re both unifying in that way.”

Take a look at some of her more hyped nail art (and some Nike sneakers), shared through her Instagram page.

The post Nail Artist Turned Sneaker Designer Took the Fashion World by Storm appeared first on MobiSpirit.

Poole’s work has also caught the attention of other brands, with her nail art being featured in publications like Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, InStyle, Interview, and Dazed & Confused among many others. She also creates tutorials that can be viewed on Vogue.com, TeenVogue.com, Refinery29, The Coveteur, and IntoTheGloss.

Her creations, full of graphic patterns and eye-popping colors, remind of abstract works of art. Except, of course, these creations aren’t meant to last. Immortalized only in photos, her nail art has amassed quite a following, with more than 130 thousand fans following her work on Instagram.

Check out some of her nail art in the gallery below and be sure to follow her on Instagram. You won’t regret it.

The post Madeline Poole’s Nail Art Is Ahead of the Curve appeared first on MobiSpirit.

Like many fashionable girls, her love for nail art began early on. Back in her school years, she rebelled against the strict dress code, but was forced to contain her color scheme and stuck with plain pinks to avoid detention. More than a decade later, when watching the ’80s movie classic Earth Girls Are Easy, her love of color and nail art sparked once again, and the Miss Pop brand was born.

Now her colorful work can be seen in Elle, Marie Claire, and Style.com/Print, and on runways during New York Fashion Week. “We’re challenging the notion of what wearable art is,” she explained in an interview with the Cut. “It’s not precious—it’s ephemeral. I can have whatever’s in fashion this week, and the next week, it changes.”

“A lot of people underestimate the power of an interesting manicure,” she added. “I like making nails look like jewelry—accessories that extend through the hands.” Talking about her early passion she added, “I’ve loved all that beauty stuff since I was a little girl. I kind of had a rekindling of my true love. I was lucky to grow up with makeup, seeing it as a constant opportunity for self-expression.”

Check out some of her eye-popping designs in the gallery below.

The post Miss Pop’s Nail Art Is the Real Deal appeared first on MobiSpirit.

What started as a pop-up developed into a salon that offers an artist-in-residence program, offering the top international nail artists the chance to engage and experience the exchange of technique and ideas. It now includes innovative nail artists, that Pinto often discovers through Instagram.

Pinto’s idea proved to be successful, and in April 2015, Vanity Projects opened its second location in Miami, Florida, and recently relocated to The Design District. Since opening, its nail art has appeared in over 50 publications. In addition to editorial spreads, their nail artists have assisted and lead runways shows at Mercedes Benz Fashion Week in New York and Miami Swim.

Nail artist from Vanity Projects have also been invited to participate in pop-ups at the Pulizer Foundation in St. Louis, the Brooklyn Museum, the Aldrich Museum, Los Angeles Contemporary Art Fair, NADA Miami Beach, Sculpture Center, and the Aspen Museum of Art.

In other words: they make fine art nails that are creative as they are funky. And though their manicures come at a hefty price, taking a glimpse at their Instagram page (with more than 100 thousand followers), proves it’s clearly worth it.

The post This Salon Puts the Art in Nail Art appeared first on MobiSpirit.

Now, she’s considered NYC’s most sought after nail artist, with clients as big as Gigi and Bella Hadid, as well as Ariana Grande. And with big names comes a big fashion statement. “I love drama,” said Kawajiri in an interview with WWD.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by 𝙉𝘼𝙄𝙇𝙎 𝘽𝙔 𝙈𝙀𝙄 (@nailsbymei)

According to her, the biggest difference between Japanese and American nail art is that Japanese designs are “more abstract,” whereas her American clients “love to have a theme.” “Even 10 years ago, [Japan was] doing what we are doing in New York: big stones, crazy charms,” she explained. “Young girls save money for their nails instead of eating a lot of food. They wanna be skinny and they wanna have cool nail art.”

Her inspiration comes from the world around her, but she admits she tries no to be too influenced by other nail gurus. “As long as I don’t copy or I don’t watch other people’s Instagram, I’m good,” she stated. “I don’t watch nail Instagrams at all. If you see [something] one time, you have the idea already on the inside of your head. I don’t wanna be like that. I wanna be always original and new.”

Here are some of her fresh designs.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by 𝙉𝘼𝙄𝙇𝙎 𝘽𝙔 𝙈𝙀𝙄 (@nailsbymei)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by 𝙉𝘼𝙄𝙇𝙎 𝘽𝙔 𝙈𝙀𝙄 (@nailsbymei)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by 𝙉𝘼𝙄𝙇𝙎 𝘽𝙔 𝙈𝙀𝙄 (@nailsbymei)

The post This Nail Artist Likes Keeping Things Fresh appeared first on MobiSpirit.

A graduate of Cooper Union, where he studied sculpting and painting, his nail art draws from his artistic background (and, some might argue, doesn’t fall short of being art in and of itself).

“I see a huge relationship formally between my paintings and my nails and they definitely inspire/inform one another,” remarked Alvear in an interview with W Magazine. “I see both my nail sculptures and my paintings as ornaments of sorts: one exists to decorate the hand and the other for space.”

According to him, if it wasn’t for his background in sculpture and painting, his obsession with nail art might not even come to exist, and his nails most probably wouldn’t look as sculptural as they do now. “To be honest I don’t really separate the nails I make from the art I make,” he says. “They are all an extension of me and the nails function almost like a series in a larger body of work.”

And, judging by his impressive following, he’s not the only one to treat his nails as art. Amongst his celebrity clients, you can find A-listers like Rihanna, Erykah Badu, and Rico Nasty. But his Instagram page isn’t for the faint of heart.

The post Juan Alvear’s Nail Art is Not For the Faint of Heart appeared first on MobiSpirit.

Made to look like robotic features, fuzed ontop human hands, his designs incorporate translucent details as well as custom made metal pieces. Matsunaga measures each client’s fingertips in advance, creating the custom pieces with a 3D printer—a painstakingly long process that can take up to three weeks.

Originally from Tokyo, and currently based in New York City, Matsunaga admits it was his sister which inspired him to take the leap of faith into fashion.

“She was working at a nail salon when I graduated from high school and,” he recalled in an interview with Dazed Magazine. “I used to help her prepare nail art samples for the salon at her apartment. Through this, I discovered that nails were my calling, and I enrolled in a nail art school soon after that.”

“My nails usually verge on the futuristic but I am still very interested in traditional methods and want to incorporate them,” he explains. “My philosophy is that detail is everything. There is a direct connection between my work and other cultural Japanese traditions in Japan, and the overarching theme is the careful attention to each stage of a process.”

Follow his Instagram page for more.

The post Robotic Nail Art? We’re All For It appeared first on MobiSpirit.

But it took her a while to come to warm up to the idea that doing someone’s nails might be the equivalent to making art. “I’ve really only just come to terms with the idea that I am an artist,” Woodley admitted in an interview with Dazed and Confused. “Growing up, I would draw a lot but didn’t consider myself an artist. Now that I have come to terms with it, each step of the process feels very emotional.”

Like most nail artists, her obsession with nail polish began at a young age. “My dad took me to get my first manicure when I was seven years old,” she recalled. “I was really obsessed with nail polish and long nails after that, even though I was a nail biter.”

But her ultimate thrust into the fashion scene came after meeting nail guru Bernadette Thompson. “After badgering her on set for hours, I went home to research her,” she says. “It hadn’t dawned on me how much influence she had in the things I loved growing up, not to mention how much money I could actually make doing nails.”

Prepare to be inspired yourself.

The post Leanne Woodley’s Nails are the Meaning of Fresh appeared first on MobiSpirit.

She was getting her master’s degree in sociology when she started uploading pictures of her nail art to Instagram. This soon became a great way to blow off steam after school, so she took a step further and opened a YouTube channel, which she aptly named Simply Nailogical. Funnily enough, she managed to form a small community around her love of nail art. Audiences started gathering to watch her videos where she’d try insane nail polish trends and challenges.

Soon she found herself living two lives: at day, she was a grown-up, serious crime and health statistics analyst, and at night she was a wacky YouTuber with an obsession with holographic nail polish. But it worked! Today she’s a YouTube star with almost 8 million subscribers, and she recently launched her own nail polish line. She’s still living her double life, but she seems to be loving every minute of it.

The post How Nail Art Obsession Launched This Analyst Into YouTube Stardom appeared first on MobiSpirit.

Born in Tokyo and based in LA, she’s won several international competitions and has amassed more than 200k followers on her Instagram page. Inspired by street and high fashion, her nail art caters to the mixed high-brow-low-brow aesthetic, adored by celebrities.

“I wanted to be a painter when I was girl — and now I’m painting on nails!” exclaimed the artist in an interview with Nail Pro. Mixing multiple nail styles, her designs include holographic art, portraits, prints, typography, and even jewelry.

Talking about her work ethics she explained the importance of being prepared. “I truly believe that the basics are the most important part of nail art. And, of course, you can’t forget to put in love,” she said. And talking about her daily routine she added: “I listen to classical music every morning because my mom did the same when I was child. I especially like the piano and horns, and I even took piano and horn lessons.”

Take a look at some of her more elaborate designs in the gallery below.

The post Bling Up Your Nail Game with Britney Tokyo appeared first on MobiSpirit.

According to Washick, she started painting her nails in 2007 after a tough break-up, and shared her nail art through her tongue-in-cheek blog titled “You Don’t Need A Man, You Need A Manicure.”

With love for anything fashion, the nail artist went on to study fashion design in Parsons, which ultimately lead to her current job. “I’ve always been interested in fashion because growing up it was a world unknown to me,” she shared with HYPEBAE. “I wanted to understand why things worked or didn’t, and what warranted a good or bad review. My curiosity lead me to study it seriously and I ended up going to Parsons for fashion design.”

“Prior to Nike, I gravitated towards women’s accessories, and designed them at Coach and Marc Jacobs,” she added. “But I view nails as a built-in accessory so it’s all a part of the fashion world in my eyes. Whether modest or complex, nails are very much a part of the look.”

And talking about the process of designing both nails and sneakers Washick said that “with both nails and sneakers, you’re pushing boundaries within a confined, classic space that’s personal to a lot of people. They’re both blank canvases but you can’t do just anything. It has to be functional to some extent. It’s also a delicate balance of standing out but being relatively easy to wear. And I also love that people feel so passionately about both. They’re both unifying in that way.”

Take a look at some of her more hyped nail art (and some Nike sneakers), shared through her Instagram page.

The post Nail Artist Turned Sneaker Designer Took the Fashion World by Storm appeared first on MobiSpirit.

Poole’s work has also caught the attention of other brands, with her nail art being featured in publications like Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, InStyle, Interview, and Dazed & Confused among many others. She also creates tutorials that can be viewed on Vogue.com, TeenVogue.com, Refinery29, The Coveteur, and IntoTheGloss.

Her creations, full of graphic patterns and eye-popping colors, remind of abstract works of art. Except, of course, these creations aren’t meant to last. Immortalized only in photos, her nail art has amassed quite a following, with more than 130 thousand fans following her work on Instagram.

Check out some of her nail art in the gallery below and be sure to follow her on Instagram. You won’t regret it.

The post Madeline Poole’s Nail Art Is Ahead of the Curve appeared first on MobiSpirit.

Like many fashionable girls, her love for nail art began early on. Back in her school years, she rebelled against the strict dress code, but was forced to contain her color scheme and stuck with plain pinks to avoid detention. More than a decade later, when watching the ’80s movie classic Earth Girls Are Easy, her love of color and nail art sparked once again, and the Miss Pop brand was born.

Now her colorful work can be seen in Elle, Marie Claire, and Style.com/Print, and on runways during New York Fashion Week. “We’re challenging the notion of what wearable art is,” she explained in an interview with the Cut. “It’s not precious—it’s ephemeral. I can have whatever’s in fashion this week, and the next week, it changes.”

“A lot of people underestimate the power of an interesting manicure,” she added. “I like making nails look like jewelry—accessories that extend through the hands.” Talking about her early passion she added, “I’ve loved all that beauty stuff since I was a little girl. I kind of had a rekindling of my true love. I was lucky to grow up with makeup, seeing it as a constant opportunity for self-expression.”

Check out some of her eye-popping designs in the gallery below.

The post Miss Pop’s Nail Art Is the Real Deal appeared first on MobiSpirit.

What started as a pop-up developed into a salon that offers an artist-in-residence program, offering the top international nail artists the chance to engage and experience the exchange of technique and ideas. It now includes innovative nail artists, that Pinto often discovers through Instagram.

Pinto’s idea proved to be successful, and in April 2015, Vanity Projects opened its second location in Miami, Florida, and recently relocated to The Design District. Since opening, its nail art has appeared in over 50 publications. In addition to editorial spreads, their nail artists have assisted and lead runways shows at Mercedes Benz Fashion Week in New York and Miami Swim.

Nail artist from Vanity Projects have also been invited to participate in pop-ups at the Pulizer Foundation in St. Louis, the Brooklyn Museum, the Aldrich Museum, Los Angeles Contemporary Art Fair, NADA Miami Beach, Sculpture Center, and the Aspen Museum of Art.

In other words: they make fine art nails that are creative as they are funky. And though their manicures come at a hefty price, taking a glimpse at their Instagram page (with more than 100 thousand followers), proves it’s clearly worth it.

The post This Salon Puts the Art in Nail Art appeared first on MobiSpirit.