When hinges creak in doorless chambers and strange and frightening sounds echo through the halls…you’re probably in the Haunted Mansion, because normal houses just shouldn’t do that.
I’ve talked a lot – some may say excessively – about the Haunted Mansion on this blog. It’s my favouritest place in the world, and when I’m feeling all crappy and burnt out on life, I listen to the Mansion’s score or watch on-Doom Buggy YouTube videos and I suddenly don’t feel so bad. And yes, I understand what an odd reaction that is to a theme park ride, but in the parlance of another Disney character, it’s my happy place, my happy thought. One of these days my husband and I will actually get off our butts and take that anniversary holiday we’ve been putting off for no good reason at all and we’ll ride the Haunted Mansion 13 times in a row, because I have ALWAYS wanted to do that. I’m convinced that something magical is going to happen on the 13th run (most likely I’ll pass out from having spent the day inhaling particulate ghost dust.)
Anyhow, when I saw that yesterday’s prompt in the 31 Day Nail Art Challenge called for a manicure inspired by artwork, I immediately thought of the portraits in the Haunted Mansion’s Stretching Room, an idea I have been meaning to put into lacquered action for ages now, but for the fact that I’m really quite crap at teeny tiny detail work. But I got some new detail brushes recently, and they’ve made detail work, even in my clumsy hands, a great deal easier, and so it was finally time to tackle at least one of the Haunted Mansion’s portrait people.
This manicure is inspired by the painting of a beautiful young woman in a purple flowered dress clutching a parasol that lines one wall of the room. When you enter the room, she looks down on you with calm eyes from the shade of her parasol, but then as the room “stretches” and the bottom half of the painting comes into view, you see our lovely young lady is actually in quite a precarious position, balancing on a frayed, slim tightrope while a hungry alligator snaps at her from below. And yet somehow she maintains her cool, which is remarkable given that she and her Stretching Room compatriots have been doing their thing at the Magic Kingdom since 1971.
One small administrative note: This manicure counts towards my ongoing (and casual) Disney Girl Challenge in which I’m attempting to capture in tiny polished form all the ladies of the Disneyverse, be they good, bad, animated or, in this case, inanimate. Parasol Gator Girl meets my highly precise criteria in that she’s both a Disney creation and a girl, and so this mani stays!
Finger Candy 