Inspired by Artwork

I have a Pinterest board that I've titled "Inspirations for Nail Art". Given my lack of creativity and poor ability at design, I seldom attempt to copy a pattern or painting. I usually attempt to copy other people's nail art, as the creation of a design to fit on fingernails has already been done for me. But occasionally I give it a try, and that's what you get to see today.

Here's the painting from which I am basing today's nail art.

It's beautiful, isn't it? I love almost all of the paintings this artist has done, though I don't have the kind of money which would allow me to purchase original artwork for my house, so all I can do is admire it on the web and point other people towards their site so maybe someone else can buy their stuff!

I originally thought I'd recreate that background with a multi-layer plastic wrap technique, starting with gray, and then white, and then a pale gray on top of it. But I got an inspiration just after I'd put the initial gray on my nails, and I pulled out a white crackle instead!

The base color was done with Sinful Shine Steel Reserve, and the crackle is Avon Mosaic Effects White. Then I used Sinful Shine Dark Room to draw some branches and the birds, and China Glaze Salsa for the leaves. I think the background would have been better represented if I had painted the crackle in a much thinner coat (some of the edges are exactly what I wanted, and if I could've kept it that thin across the nail it would've been closer to what I imagined than what came out) but I'm happy with the end result nonetheless.

Week 31: Crackle

Good morning fellow hobbyists! This week's theme on the Year's Challenge is crackle. I tried a bunch of designs out on my nail wheels before deciding on this one. I also realized that while I have two Wet N Wild crackles (Free, Free at Last and You're Too Good For Him), I don't actually like either one. They're pretty colors, but they just don't crackle wide enough to actually show the base color. Maybe I'm applying them wrong, but since I haven't had any trouble getting my new Avon Mosaics to crackle properly, and I've so far hated the application of every other Wet N Wild polish I've used, other than their glitter topcoats, I suspect it's just that I don't get along with WNW polishes in general. :P

On to today's manicure! I've decided to call this Cracked Lava, because at the right angle (which I had a hard time capturing on photo, drat it!), most of my nails really do look like lava flowing under cracked, blackened rock. I love it!

There are six layers of polish here, not counting base and top coats! I started with two coats of NYC Black Lace Creme, followed by three coats of Zoya Opal on my ring fingers, and three coats of Essie LuxEffects Shine of the Times on all the others. This was topped, of course, by a single coat of Avon Mosaic Effects in Black, applied on the diagonal. I think crackle looks best applied at an angle, because that allows it to look more random, more natural than crackle applied on a straight line, which tends to look just like cracked pavement that needs repair. :P

 I took waaay more pictures than strictly necessary of this manicure. I just love color shifting polishes, and I take pictures at every conceivable angle of light, trying to show off the variation! The pictures above were taken indoors, as it seemed to be the only lighting that wanted to show the -red- on film. The remainder of these were taken in the sunlight, which is my favorite lighting for nail pictures. I've taken to taking my camera to work the day after I do my nails, so I can take pictures outside on my lunch hour, rather than taking pictures inside the night I do them.