Where the Green Grass Grows...

I think my favorite manicure these days tend to be ones inspired by something other than nails. I've got a whole board on my Pinterest dedicated to Inspirations for Nail Art. I've also got separate boards for nail art itself, my own nail art (with links to here, so you can keep track of my pretties there or here, whichever is easier for you :), and nail polishes I want to own...though that last one really does tend to predominate to the browns and greens, since those are the polishes that catch my eye the most and make me go "Ooooh I WANT!" I try to actually buy a full spectrum of colors (thank you China Glaze for putting out collections that contain so many colors that I want - Capitol Colors and On Safari - that I give in and buy the whole thing!) but it's pretty much greens and browns that go on my wishlist.

I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing to write up blog posts when I'm hyper. I think the babble that comes out is more amusing than if I'm writing on a more calm day, but on the other hand, do you guys actually read these things or just look at the pretty pictures?? (Yes, co-worker N, I know you read them, but does anyone else, or am I just making myself giggle here? ;)

Aaaaanyway, on to what you're actually here for - you know, the nail art? :) As I was saying, I like the manicures I make based on something other than nails, in today's case, a pair of socks. Yes, a pair of socks! I don't actually own this particular pair (though I'd love to!) but I love weird and quirky socks, and so I enjoy perusing www.artisansocks.com for their aMAZing selection of socks! So, this is the pair I wanted to recreate on my nails:

Aren't they adorable? Here's my, hopefully equally adorable, interpretation of them!

I started with a base of Color Trend Ice Sheers Refreshing Pair, which you can't really see in the final manicure, but it made the layering of the lightest green color just the right shade of yellow-green, since I didn't have exactly the right color in my polish paint palette. (I'm tempted to start calling it my Triple-P, but then I'd have to explain it each time I did, which sort of negates the purpose of the nickname... Heh. My brain is weird, have you noticed?)

Onward! I painted horizontal stripes of China Glaze Black Diamond for the grey top stripe, and Nubar Forest, and China Glaze Tree Hugger for the dark and medium greens. Then, starting with the dark green, I painted the taller grass upward into the color above it. Finally, I used Sinful Colors Innocent for the bottom light green grass, and lightly filled it in over the Refreshing Pear. I did try using Innocent as the base color on a test wheel first, but I preferred the color over Refreshing Pear rather than by itself. By itself, the blades of grass up over the Tree Hugger looked very different in shade than the bottom stripe, and it just looked wrong.

Then I used China Glaze Dress Me Up with a dotting tool to make the base color for the flowers, and layered on top of it Sinful Colors Neptune, then a single dot of Sinful Colors Snow Me White, and finally a small dot of NYC Black Lace Creme. I actually only did the flowers on my left (non-dominant) hand, and left my right hand with just the blades of grass. They were both cute! Of course, I was also developing a headache by the time I finished and decided it wasn't worth adding the flowers to the second hand...but really, I did like both versions! That's my story and I'm sticking to it...