Clouds

This week's theme for NAIL is clouds. I wasn't sure if I was going to do this one or not because I couldn't think of anything to do. Inspiration can often come at weird times, though. On Sunday, I was visiting my grandma and her napkins gave me an idea. Instead of just clouds on my nails, I would also put butterflies and dragonflies, which were what were printed on them.

First I had to remove my old mani and used the most amazing nail polish remover! (which can be seen here.) I wanted to paint my nails blue and then use a sponge to dab on some white. However, I could not for the life of me find one in my house. I read on many different manicures and nail blogs that make-up sponges are perfect for some manis, but I don't wear make-up. I thought that maybe my mom had an extra one, but she rarely wears make-up and only had the one that came with what she has. Then a stroke of genius hit me in the form of a toe separator. Those are spongy! I thought what the heck, I'll give it a try!

Then a funny thing happened... it looked great!

It's a little hard to tell in the picture, but the sponging effect gives it a texture. I wanted to paint dragonflies and butterflies, so I wanted to smooth out that texture to make it easier to paint the details. The first picture shows it right after doing the sponging while the next two pictures of after adding a layer, and then two, of clear polish.

These are my finished nails. As usual, I think that my left hand turned out better, although that mostly has to do with that I cleaned it off better. But doing nail art is one of the occasions when it pays to be semi-ambidextrous! (Thank you, brain tumour!)

NAIL challenge