Halloween Town (31DC2015)

I recently celebrated this blog’s second anniversary, with my second nail art-iversary also coming a few months before that. One of my favourite memories from those very early days was the afternoon I decided to tackle a super detailed mani depicting Halloween Town from The Nightmare Before Christmas. I was such a cocky little twit, overly confident in my still fairly non-existent nail art abilities – it never occurred to me that working with a dark, predominantly purple palette in itty bitty micro detail would be, you know, difficult or anything. So was it? Yes, of course! Hair-pullingly difficult, actually – the tufts I ripped out above my temples are only just now growing back. 😉 It was an exercise in pure crazy, and as proud as I was of them at the time, I was in way over my head. Observe:

So nearly two years to the day that I did those original Nightmare nails, I decided to revisit Halloween Town for day 29’s theme of supernatural in the 31 Day Nail Art Challenge, just to see how much my technique had (hopefully) improved. And guess what? It improved a lot! Behold the learning curve on two years of nearly daily manis, friends – practice really does make perfect (or perfect enough for now.)

And really, in the case of these two manis, it’s not so much the difference that time and practice have made – it’s just being confident enough in my abilities as a nail artist and a blogger to know what will work (a matte topcoat, because glossy topcoats throw too much glare) and what won’t (shitty bathroom lighting, wonky hand positions and dry, chapped hands!) It’s the little things. Glad I had the opportunity to try this design again and do it up right.