Portrait of the Artist as a Gardener

Another literary reference for you there, this time tying this polish, Emily de Molly’s Monet’s Garden, to James Joyce’s Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man.  Wah-wah.  It’s not my best literary allusion, but I try (actually, I don’t; Portrait is another one of those texts I was assigned across multiple courses in university, and yet still managed to avoid like it was carrying the plague.  Paging Mr. Joyce: HAVE A FREAKING POINT.)

The point of this post was to highlight Monet’s Garden, a favourite of mine and a fitting polish for this rainy, nearly heady summer’s day, but I fear I’m just exposing myself as an academic fraud – in my English classes in particular, if I could avoid a text, I would.  Which is not exactly the point in pursuing a post-secondary education, now, is it, although I take perverse pleasure in having dodged dour old Joyce across three different classes.  THAT I remember, go figure.

Monet’s Garden

I broke a nail rather spectacularly this week, and so in lieu of soldiering on as I have in the past, my tinier-than-usual nubs an aggravating reminder not to vigorously shake water off my hands two inches away from a stone clad wall, I’ve decided to mine through some banked posts for a bit of content from The Way We Were files until I’m all healed up. As such, I’ve posted an absolute mess of swatch-type posts and very little nail art as of late, an absence I was sort of surprised to have felt. If you had told me a little over a year ago that I’d feel ever so slightly off after going three days in a row without intricately painting my nails, I’d have dubbed you Lord or Lady Crazy Pants, because nail polish and nail art were just not that important to me. Now I’m trying to find coping mechanisms to get through half a week of holo withdrawal. Strange world.

Having said all that, there’s infinitely worse ways to tide myself over and appease the nail blogging gods than with swatches of gorgeous polishes like this one, Emily de Molly’s Monet’s Garden. This is one of the first international polishes I ever bought, and it remains a favourite in major rotation owing to its lush turquoise jelly base and Impressionist-esque mix of holographic glitter. The great Cher Horowitz once commented that a classmate of hers was a “full-on Monet” – “It’s like a painting, see? From far away it’s okay, but up close it’s a big old mess” – but she’d be dead wrong about this nail polish, because it’s sublimely gorgeous just every which way.

Spearmint Luau

Because the colours of this manicure are spearminty (also sort of pepperminty) and the little leaves make my ring finger and thumb look like they’re wearing teeny grass skirts. Aloha!

Mixed messages aside, these nails represent my entry in the third, long since past week of the January N.A.I.L. Challenge for the theme of opposites. The aim was to do something unusual, maybe a technique you’ve rarely tried or a colour you’ve never used, step outside your comfort zone a bit and hopefully discover a fun new nail art trick in the process.

With that in mind, I thought a mani studded with fimo cut-outs would apply, as I dislike the feel of “stuff” on my nails and therefore rarely use anything like studs or flowers or little spearmint leaves that actually look more like grass skirts!

Here I tacked a few fimo leaves (which really aren’t so bad after all) onto a manicure featuring two of my favourite polishes, Emily de Molly’s gorgeous teal glitter, Monet’s Garden, and Picture Polish’s perfect golden raspberry, Electric Dream.

Lily Pads

Does it count as nail art if the base colour is doing all the heavy lifting?

I received my monthly allotment of nail mail yesterday, and contained therein was a bottle of the much coveted Emily de Molly polish Monet’s Garden. Emily de Molly is an Australian indie polish maker, and their goods are fairly hard to come by. I actually purchased it during an online timed event some weeks back in which I scrambled to fire my Visa number into the computer before it sold out (which it did, in under five minutes.)

But IIIIIIIIIII WAS THE CHAMPION, MY FRI-END, and I’LLLLLLLLL GET ALL THE EMILY DE MOLLY, IN THE ENNNNNDDDDDD! And so it arrived and I went to town, and two nice coats of Monet’s Garden later, I thought I’d stop; it was just too beautiful and deep, like the world’s clearest, most gorgeous pond, and I didn’t want to ruin all that pretty.

Then I woke up this morning and thought my pond could use some lily pads, and so here we are: Proof positive you can add your own little inspired touches to something already enchantingly gorgeous to make it just that much sweeter. 🙂