Arteries of the Sea

This manicure started out life as a coral design.  I was going to make a bunch of The Walking Dead Carl/Coral jokes, too (the filthier and more unhinged Rick gets, the more he defaults to bellowing for his son, CORAL!!! Please watch this short YouTube video that inexplicably makes me nearly pee my pants every time I see it for further explanation and laughter:)

All was going well with the CORAL!!! design until I added the dark orange and yellow shading along the branches of the you-know-what, turning this CAWWWWRRRLLL into something more closely resembling the diagram on page 74 of your grade 11 biology textbook.  Still pretty, although also sort of icky.  I don’t like it when my nail art gets too real.  Cotton candy zombie unicorns, yes, the inner workings of the human form, lord NO.

And so I changed the title of this post to better reflect the reality of these nails, although I’m glad I was able to work in that Walking Dead joke regardless.  Bless you, Rick Grimes, you incompetent bastard; never stop losing your sh— CORAL?!?

Knitwit

I’m participating in a nail art challenge over on Instagram (@sandra_fingercandy, if you’d like to come by; it’s mainly the nail art you see here, just with fewer meandering, prose-y bits, and more cats) and the first week’s challenge theme is a pattern, sub-theme coral. I have this corally-pink holographic polish I’m not 100 percent sold on, Glam Polish’s New Girl in Town, which I thought would be perfect for this manicure, as I always overcompensate when I’m not totally fond of a polish by using it so often, I eventually just cave and fall in love. And so here I paired a base of New Girl in Town with some simple little free-handed hash marks in a co-ordinating orange holo, KB Shimmer’s Rust No One, for a monochromatic, but still sparkly, knit-type look. Super easy and very pretty – see, coming around on that polish already. 🙂

Coral Print (OMD2)

Day two’s theme of coral in the Oh Mon Dieu 2 nail art challenge very nearly led me to recreate some super fun and well-received coral reef nails I did last week (“Hey look, it’s the, um, backside of the reef!”) Despite the fact that they were one of the best nail art designs I’ve ever done, cranking out a second coral reef felt like an unnecessarily lazy answer to the challenge theme, and so I went with something once again inspired by all that gorgeous underwater life, but this time in a patterned fabric-type design (come to think of it, I’m pretty sure Waverly has a printed cotton fabric in this exact same design. Hmm, same colours, too. Cripes, let’s hope the Waverly trademark lawyer goons don’t show up to break my thumbs, because then I won’t be able to blog!) 😦

Coral Reef

One day when I was a kid, I very grandly announced to my parents that when I grew up, I was going to become a marine biologist. No doubt this surprised the heck out of my parents, as I had never shown any appreciable talent or interest in the biological sciences (my parents still speak in disbelieving, vaguely awed terms about the Sunday evening in grade 2 when I commented rather nonchalantly that I had a leaf project due the next morning. Cue my mother frantically running around our not-insubstantial front lawn scooping up handfuls of wet, moldy leaves whilst yelping, “Maple! I’ve got a Maple! And, um…oh crap, what is this?! Oh, Poplar! Okay, next show momma an Oak!”)

They were probably also a bit surprised by my exclamation on account of the fact that for as long as I can remember, I have been terrified of large bodies of water and the critters that dwell beneath them. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a phobia in the traditional sense of the word. I don’t break out into hives or shriek at the mere sight of a river (good thing, too, since I live right beside one.) I’m also not so weird about it that I won’t boat or even, say, swim with sharks in a highly sanitized experience at Walt Disney World. But honestly, the mere thought of even wading into the ocean up to my mid-calves fills me with a kind of dread I just don’t need in my life. It’s mostly the not knowing that creeps me out – like, what is down there going about its business while my legs dangle enticingly above? I think I’d be okay scuba diving (in a group, please – safety in numbers!) because at least I’d be down there with the things that want to eat me, you know? Because it’s better to see the things that are going to shock, sting, squeeze and bite me to death, I guess?

Anyhow, I think it goes without saying my future plans did not pan out. But don’t worry, I’m not too broken up about it (neither are my parents; imagine them trying to fix my neglected shark project two hours before deadline!) Turns out I’d far prefer to paint pretty coral reefs on my nails than actually be underwater with them. 😉