Here at our self-proclaimed world’s cutest research lab we throw lots of things away, because honestly most of our tests don’t work out. All of our fails are actually wins, because every wrong answer goes towards figuring out the right solutions for our designs. Some of our trash is actually kind of pretty. Above are cold enamel tests. Below are concept sketches.

We decided to create a manicure that was inspired by the ladybug’s classic “outfit”, polka dots! Check out how we mimic some of our favorite color combos from species in our ladybug pin collection.

Start off by painting your nails with a base clear coat, followed by a layer of the base color. After these layers are completely dry, paint the polka dots with a pin (we found a pinback works best although you can experiment with different tools). You also may need to do some tests on a piece of paper before you apply it directly to your nails.

And Voila…You now have a ladybug inspired manicure!

Here are the ladybug species names that inspired the look for each fingernail as seen in these photos:

Thumb: Seven-spotted Lady Beetle
Index: Montezuma Lady Beetle
Middle: Fifteen-spotted Lady Beetle
Ring: Cream-spotted Lady Beetle
Pinky: Two-spotted Lady Beetle

Say “Hi” to my ladybug pins. Here’s the story about how they are made.

I wanted the ladybug pins to look as realistic as possible so I started out with specimens of real ladybugs. An expert jewelry maker in the New York City jewelry district made a mold of the specimens and created red wax ladybugs. I then sculpted the wax ladybugs which was surprisingly difficult because they are so tiny. In fact, all of my sculpting tools were too big, so I wound up using a straight pin (usually for sewing) and the tip of an exacto blade.

Back to the expert jewelry makers who created another mold of the wax ladybug to cast a silver master. A final mold was made of the master and then the ladybugs were cast in silver.

The hardest part is creating all of the colors and patterns for the 11 different colors (9 species) of ladybug. Each ladybug is hand painted with enamel, and it took a lot of experimentation to mix the correct colors and figure out the best viscosities. I wanted the spots to be a part of the shell so the whole thing would look nice and shiny (instead of the spots painted as a second layer on top of the shell). This means that the spots have to be painted onto the shell while the shell color is still wet. The shell paint sort of absorbs the spot paint, sometimes causing bleeding and discoloration. Since they are so small, the spots are painted on with a needle. I have to be very careful to make the spots the correct shape.

My favorite part is adding the ladybug faces. I really take my time to make sure all of the faces are cute.

It’s almost fashion week again. I’ve been attending since 2005, I’m getting a little jaded, and I’m getting fewer front row invites. I’ve been thinking back to the excitement of my first fashion week show. I was nervous bordering on terrified, wearing a borrowed outfit I couldn’t afford and sitting front row at the Project Runway fashion show beside Nick Verreos. I felt like I was royalty that morning, and a million people/reporters came up to talk to me. “Do you know how lucky you are to be sitting in the front row? Is this the best day of your life? Who do you think will win? Tell me a secret about the show without violating your contract.” I was still trying to get over the fact that I was actually in a Bryant Park fashion week show. Debra Messing walked by and said “Hi Diana” and I was like, “OMG, Debra Messing, you know my name!”.

And then two men came out and started removing the plastic covering the runway, the lights started to dim, and there was finally, a hush. It’s like unwrapping a present, the show was about to start. I’m filled with excitement, pride, anticipation. At this moment there were so many possibilities, anything could come down the runway! And I thought, “I am so excited to be a fashion designer!”

It doesn’t matter how many shows I attend, I still feel the same thrill when they peel back the plastic to start the show. I’m excited to see what possibilities this fashion week will bring.

During our many trips of 2011, we’ve found some golden remnants here and there. So we decided to make some limited edition Holiday Gold Fortune Cookie Coin Purses.

We ran out of our satin ribbon fortunes, so our friend, Tyler Denoff printed some more for us. Above is a look at how they are made.

I’m excited about my new Ladybug Pin collection. I wanted the pins to look as realistic as possible so that it will look like the wearer has a real ladybug crawling on their shirt. The pins are modeled after 11 different species in the Coccinellidae or ladybug family (pictures of the real bugs are below). I was really surprised that there were so many different species of ladybugs. There was even a ladybug that looked like it had flames painted on the sides… unfortunately, I was not able to replicate that one. Nature is pretty amazing. Pins are $75 and available in my shop.

a. Cream-spotted Lady BeetleCalvia quatuordecimguttata, b. Fifteen-spotted Lady Beetle Anatis labiculata, c. Three-banded Lady Beetle Coccinella trifasciata, d. Seven-spotted Lady Beetle Coccinella septempunctata, e. California Lady Beetle Coccinella californica, f. Cream-spotted Lady Beetle Calvia quatuordecimguttata, g. Montezuma Lady Beetle Thalassa montezumae, h. Fifteen-spotted Lady Beetle Anatis labiculata, i. Multicolored Asian Lady Beetle Harmonia axyridis, j. Myzia interrupta, k. Two-spotted Lady Beetle Adalia bipunctata

Here’s a quick little video to demonstrate the Jack Frost Scarf in action. It’s not cold enough in NYC to demo it outside, so I used an ice tray. You can buy a scarf in our shop.

It took me three years to perfect the Fibonacci Scarf pattern, and it takes hundreds of hours to hand knit one scarf. So I brought my Fibonacci Scarf pattern to the Textile Design Lab (TDL) in New Zealand to see if they would be able to manufacture them. They were able to program my design into the computer, hit “print”, and have their whole garment knitting machine spit out Fibonacci knit scarves, just like printing on a home inkjet printer. In this photo you see a sweater coming out, but that’s a project I will tell you about later.

At TDL very talented technician Gordon programs whole garment knitting machines and works with a lot of super soft merino wools. Whole garment knitting machines are able to knit an entire garment. You don’t need to sew up seams or attach sleeves, a finished garment comes out of the machine.

When you create the program for a knit garment, you can copy and paste sections of the code from other garments. So you can add a sleeve from something, and a collar from something else. There wasn’t anything like the Fibonacci Scarf, so Gordon had to create the program from scratch. It’s a complicated knit structure, and he was able to program in details like different amounts of tension for a lot of individual stitches. Above is a screen shot of the knit program getting debugged. You can actually go through, look at the individual stitches, and make corrections to the code.

Above is a video of the machine knitting. You can see the carriage moving back and forth as it knits the yarn across a bed of needles.

TDL specializes in making low quantity experimental designs. They work a lot with very soft merino wools and merino possum blends. After all merino wool is one of New Zealand’s top luxury exports. The Fibonacci Scarves are all knit from the local NZ stuff that TDL helped me to source. The scarves are knit on the very machine pictured above and then brought to the US. You can buy one in our shop.

I’m getting ready for my next photo shoot and realized I forgot to post photos from the last one. So here’s a look back at our Laser Lace photo shoot:

When fashion photographer (and friend) Ricardo Louis and I were walking around Prospect Park scouting a location for our photo shoot, we decided to leave by way of the Grand Army Plaza arch. We walked up to the fountain and immediately thought, wow, can we shoot on the statue?

The answer is, yes, yes we can. We just had to overcome the issue of traversing the water surrounding the statue with model, hair stylist, make-up artist, photographer, assistant, and me.

My intern Kristin had the excellent idea of outfitting all of us in rain boots and we brought a step ladder to help us climb in and out of the water.

We had the pleasure of working with an excellent model from Click Models. She did a really nice job making dreamy model eyes. This is surprisingly hard to do, because the models squint a little which usually makes one eye bigger than the other. Some models do special exercises to maintain evenness. In addition, we are using reflectors to shine the sun directly into the models face (and eyes).

I wanted a 40′s hair style, so we worked with Selda Cortes from Lotus Salon who specializes in vintage pin-up hair styles. Make-up artist Jessica Jade Jacob often works with the NY Pin-up society, did the make-up.

I’m not one for glamor shots. But I discovered my narcissistic side when Jonathan Monaghan resident artist at MakerBot 3-D scanned me for their “New York Notables” event… and then was kind enough let me get 3-D scanned again. Scan with hair up, scan with hair down, scan with glasses, I even tried to curl up into a little ball so that my whole body would fit in the scanning area.

Here’s a phone video of me getting scanned courtesy of George Shammas. I think it’s like when they used to take old photographs, you had to sit still for a really long exposure and you only got a photo taken once or twice during your lifetime. Black colors don’t scan so I am covered in corn starch. The scans have lots of noise and don’t come out perfect (there’s extra little pieces everywhere and some empty spots as you can see in the image above. Jonathan cleaned up a 3-d model/scan of me with ponytail which you can download from Thingiverse.com and you can download my intern, Kristin. Below, I am printed on a MakerBot.

Thanks MakerBot and Jonathan for making a 3-d record of me the Summer of 2011. I plan to show the scan to my grand kids so they make fun of how dated I will look.