Frosted Circus Animal Cookies! (31DC2015)

Although I still have two more prompts to tackle in the 31 Day Nail Art Challenge, I thought I’d jump ahead to the final day’s theme of honouring nails you love. Well, actually, it’s honOring nails you *heart*, but I’m Canadian, so it’s O-U, and also, I don’t speak emoticon.

The manicure that I love and chose to honour is a simple, but adorable and delicious-looking, sprinkled animal cracker design by Sarah Waite of Chalkboard Nails. It was one of those manicures that when I saw it, I just about whacked myself in the forehead in annoyance – “Oh cripes, why didn’t I think of that?!” I mean, I have painted foodstuffs on my nails hundreds of times now – how did I miss super cute frosted animal crackers? And Sarah did such a fabulous job on them, too – while they may *just* be random dots in a clutch of rainbow brights over a base of frosty pink and white, the dotting work is excellent; very random and natural-looking. I have the aggravating habit in my nail art of wanting things to be perfectly symmetrical, which is just not how things like sprinkles work! So I really admire her “little bit of this, little bit of that” approach to an otherwise pretty basic dotticure – let the sprinkles lie where they may and all that. 🙂

I admire her approach so much, in fact, that eagle-eyed readers may notice that my interpretation of her manicure is no such thing – it’s actually a dot-by-dot recreation of her animal cracker design! I wanted to get a feel for a more randomized approach to dotting work, and the only way to do that was to “trace” her design, a practice I used to employ quite frequently in the early days of my nail art obsession, but less and less over the past two years as I’ve developed my own eye for design.

A quick word about that “tracing”, however. It’s fine to draw major inspiration from another nail artist, or even to just flat out copy somebody else’s design, right down to the colours used – sometimes that’s how people learn how to do something, like me! When I first started nail arting, I’d often find a design I liked on Pinterest or, yes, Chalkboard Nails, call it up on my tablet and then get down to work, copying it brushstroke for brushstroke to the best of my ability. Simply DOING it was the only way I was going to learn, and I wasn’t yet confident enough in my skills to just strike out on my own all willy nilly.

But! I never, ever published those early, copycat manicures in any form, and if I was ever asked, all due credit for the design went to the nail artist in question. It’s just good form. And if you’re going to publish inspired-by or copycat manis to your blog or vlog or Instagram, like these circus cookie nails, it’s best form to link back to the original post and creation. Okay, class, lecture on proper attribution done. 😉