charm & chain chronicals: fall trend newsletters

Lately, much of my extra-curricular attention has been focused on my freelance work at Charm & Chain where I have been helping the lovely ladies there develop topics for newsletters, among many other fun tasks. I posted this Tropical Trend newsletter back in July and we have continued to develop more on-point trend newsletters since then. My favorite e-mail blast, which actually linked to a blog post I wrote for the site, is the Jewel-Spotting story above. In the post, I pulled some of my favorite street style images from this past NYFW that featured amazing, on-trend jewelry and paired the images with similar pieces available for purchase at Charm & Chain.

In other news, I recently began blogging for one of my favorite shopping sites, global e-commerce destination, L-atitude. My first post for them on different ways to tie a scarf ran this weekend, and I am am still so excited! Check it out here.

Stay tuned for some fresh TNTP content coming very soon!

Peace, Love and Neon,

Marisa

charm & chain chronicles: tropical escape

My tropical obsession has carried over to my Charm & Chain work. Are you at all surprised?

I knew I had to curate this sale to include those amazing Elizabeth Cole parrot earrings, Alexis Bittar's monkey collection and Lulu Frost's funny banana earrings. And how awesome is that Kenneth Jay Lane green spike necklace? Love it all! Check out the entire selection on charmandchain.com.

Peace, Love and Neon,
Marisa

diy: painted rhinestone necklace

If you follow me on Instagram (@theneonteaparty), you probably caught the above photo of my good friend, fashion stylist and swimwear designer Heather aka Heather Feather rocking a painted rhinestone necklace I customized for her last week. The project was inspired by a genius, "why-didn't-I-think-of-that?!" DIY I came across recently on P.S.-I made this...'s Instagram feed, and I finally got to test it out when Heather so generously surrendered a bunch of her old rhinestone jewelry for me to mess around with.

The project is as simple as this:

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Take a rhinestone necklace (or any other form of rhinestone jewelry) and paint over the stones with your favorite matte nail polish colors. Tada! Tom Binns-inspired jewelry of your dreams! Heather requested a combination of nude and neon pink, so I used "Don't Pretzel My Buttons" by OPI and "Jackie Oh!" by Color Club (available at Harmon). If you choose to use neon nail polish, you need to use a white base coat to make the color pop. If you don't, the sheer lacquer will create more of a stained glass effect on the rhinestones, which you don't want. My white of choice was "I Will!" by L'Oreal. 

Here's what the necklace looked like pre-neonization:

I opted for a singular coat of nude, as to not soften the facets of the stones too much. I painted the accent stones with enough white so that they were completely opaque and then added enough pink to cover all evidence of white paint and until the hue really popped. I decided against a clear top coat to keep the matte effect, but you might want to use it to prevent chipping. Let dry for a few hours, 

and voilà! 

I think it came out pretty well, don't you?

For more inspiration, head over to Charm & Chain to check out their Tom Binns debut, chock full of dazzling neon color combo-spiration for your rhinestone painting desires! And definitely let me know if you try this easy DIY yourself!

Peace, Love and Neon,

Marisa