Clueless About Plaid

I did this manicure for the prompt of Back to School in a nail art challenge I’m following along with over on Instagram.  Come by and see me sometime – park_or_perish is my handle.

Having dabbled in Cher Horowitz’s fashion sensibilities for much of the mid-90s, particularly on the first day of grade 13 – come on, all those little velveteen dresses and stacked Steve Madden loafers were AWESOME! – Back to School to me always means Back to Clueless, a place – or is it a state of mind? – I’m never actually particularly far from anyways.  And what’s better than Cher’s yellow plaid outfit she chooses – or is it her computer that chooses? – to make her big entrance at school?  Ooh, Snickers. 😉

Stranger Barb (31DC2016)

It’s been at least a few days since I’ve done a Stranger Things manicure, and what better time to bust out the big Barb guns – Queen Barb of the Upside Down, destroyer of fun, patron saint of orange – than for day 21’s theme of a colour in the 31 Day Nail Art Challenge.  And orange is completely the colour I associate with Buzzkill Barb – hair, stiff, high-necked plaid blouses, gunk coming out of her mouth when she’s first snatched by the Demogorgon and abducted to the Upside Down (per one of the innumerable pieces I’ve read about Stranger Things, that gunk was a mixture of oil, baby food and marmalade – literally more oranges for poor Barb, who might have lived had she not been the only person in history to nearly cut off her hand trying to shotgun a beer.  And also if she had just told her horny loser friends to kiss the very widest part of her mom jeans-covered ass and gone home to cry in her bedroom alone.  I vote for the latter, and I think in hindsight Barb probably would, too!)

Tartan

Always mad for plaid.  Or is it driven mad by plaid?  Because these nails were fussy!  I’m not quite sure why I always decide to freehand my more geometrically-inclined manicures – strikes me striping tape could be beneficial in such situations.  Then I think about all the times I’ve just wound up with little bits of striping tape stuck to my face and arms, and the road (less precisely) traveled suddenly seems like the better option!

Mad for Madras

In high school I owned a pair of pastel, plaid, old man golf pants that were about four sizes too big for me. I bought them at a secondhand store that specialized in such fashionable inanities (that particular store was also where I purchased a number of long, sweeping broomstick skirts – man, they looked so great with a pair of Docs – a lumpy, but gorgeous, Fair Isle sweater for $5 and a pair of leather wrist cuffs for my future husband and I that actually turned out to be bondage wear.) Paired with my very favourite t-shirt, a khaki green Third Rail tee with a giant black star on the chest – you might have also seen it on Michael Stipe in R.E.M.’s What’s the Frequency, Kenneth? video if you’re old like me and remember either R.E.M. or music videos – it made for quite the fetching ensemble. Really, though, one of my all time favourite outfits – I loved both those pants and that t-shirt INTENSELY, even though I looked like a cracked out grandpa (ESPECIALLY if I paired the above with a pair of Birkenstocks!)

These madras plaid-inspired nails remind me of those pants. Okay, so this plaid might be a touch vibrant – my golf pants were firmly in Easter egg territory – but heavens, is it close! Time to note – or is it that apparent? – that putting together a fashionable ensemble has never really been my thing? 🙂