Make it Pink! Make it Blue!

Or make it a little bit of both!  But that really didn’t fit the fairies’ rhyming scheme in Sleeping Beauty, so they just stopped with pink and blue.

I, however, did not stop with just pink and blue in this manicure (Pure Ice’s frosty pink Peony and Nails Inc.’s cobalt Baker Street, in case you were curious) topping both polishes with Mr. Bubble, a favourite glitter topper from indie polish maker Polish Me Silly that has to be at least five years old now, and I’m just astonished that it’s still in polish-able condition.  Glitter-based polishes, particularly those in mini bottles, have a tendency to dry up rather quickly, but this bubbly lovely is still flowing smoothly.  Noice!

I cribbed the indigo-over-pink gradient AND the choice of glitter polish from an old Chalkboard Nails manicure that first caught my eye back in – woah, sorry, had to take a moment to contemplate my own mortality there for a sec – 2014.  The glittery little bow was my idea, although I’ll add a bow charm to just about any mani I can.  Sarah Thompson, the blogger and nail artist behind Chalkboard Nails, is still doing her thing, albeit now over on Instagram.  I follow some nail art accounts, and yet I had absolutely no idea that she was still in the mix.  Instagram really sucks these days, doesn’t it?

This mani doesn’t suck and I love this colour combination.  And three cheers for Mr. Bubble, keepin’ on keepin’ on. 🙂

Lumpy Space

Oh my glob, looks like it’s time for another Adventure Time manicure, this one a nail art design heavily influenced AND inspired by Sarah Waite of Chalkboard Nails. Lumpy Space, for the uninformed, is the pastel cloud-covered kingdom of the Lumpy Space Princess, a giant purple blob with a speech impediment and a raging diva attitude. She’s one of something like 50-odd (VERY odd) sovereigns in Adventure Time, and her fluffy cloud kingdom (think Care-a-Lot, but dark, and with a heavy emphasis on purple) is pretty spectacular.

So spectacular, actually, that back in June of 2014 Sarah did an awesome Lumpy Space manicure, and one I’ve admired right from the get-go. Perhaps it’s the not-so-basic background of dark purple and magenta dots, or maybe it’s the bright pastels of the lush, plush clouds, or perhaps it’s the matte finish, but whatever “it” is, I just love this manicure, and so I decided to finally recreate it, Finger Candy-style. Not a bad likeness either, although I think I prefer the colours Sarah used – a little closer to the original.

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. 😉

Misfits

My husband was recently on a rather extended business trip, and faced with long nights with naught by Neflix and unlimited bandwidth to keep me entertained, I started watching just whatever struck my fancy (Monte Carlo? Soul Surfer?), including a few programs I’ve been recommended and just never got around to watching.

There entered Misfits, and there went any semblance of productivity I hoped to accomplish over the next week and a half. Life seriously ground to a bit of a halt while I devoured the first six-episode series and desperately tried to stay away from the second so my husband and I could watch it together. Premiering in 2009 and spanning five seasons, Misfits, for the unenlightened – it shouldn’t need saying, but you really ought to get enlightened – is a British show about five screw-up young offenders who, on their first day of community service, are caught out in an electrical storm and struck by lightning, after which they discover they’ve developed super powers. Wackiness ensues (as does charm and that delightful sense of British humour, to say nothing of heartbreak and loss and some genuinely touching pathos.) It’s fast paced and crass (owing in large part to one character, Nathan Young, the walking, never-stops-talking embodiment of the young male id) and so funny, there are scenes that have put me into actual stitches, doubled over on my couch from lack of oxygen. But it’s also sad and contemplative and DARK – questionable morals are what the Misfits are all about. The soundtrack also kicks eight kinds of electronic and Brit Pop ass.

I admittedly haven’t watched much of the third season, choosing instead to compulsively watch the first two series for reasons I shall keep to myself in the interest of not spoiling the story for you – did I mention that you should be watching this show? 😉 – but the first two seasons simply crackle with energy and chemistry, and it’s such a delight to watch. Two enthusiastic thumbs up.

And so with Misfits dominating my life for the past two weeks, I thought I should give it the nail art treatment. Here I tried out Chalkboard Nails‘ smoke effect manicure, in which you paint a lightning design over top of a dark polish, immediately blotting it out with a flat-sided nail art brush dipped in acetone. I then painted on a few fine strands of super power-inducing chain “laaaightnin'”, as the character of Kelly would say, and gave my thumb the logo treatment. An ever so slight mis-fit for my Misfits.

Roll Dem Bones

These nails, a blatant copycat of a Chalkboard Nails design, feature another polish I received as an anniversary gift, Nails Inc.’s Leather Effect in Noho. A textured polish that dries ever so slightly pebbly to the touch, it made the perfect backdrop for my last Halloween-inspired design of the season.