Out of My Comfort Zone

Nail art, especially freehand nail art, is something I keep saying I want to spend more time on, but when I have a chunk of hours to play with my polishes, I almost always do other things that I'm more comfortable doing, like swatching and layering and comparing. But when I did the comps I showed Friday, I managed to ignore the voice in my head that said when I was done with those, I should move on to swatching another collection because that would for sure go well and be a good blog post. Instead, I left the blue comparison swatches on my hand and grabbed some of my rarely used nail art stripers and a purple creme to make a garden on my fingers. Somehow starting with the mismatched base colors made it easier to play, like if I messed up and ended up with nothing I wanted to show the world, at least I wouldn't have wasted the time putting on a base color. I know, it seems like goofy reasoning, but if that's what it takes, okay.

So I had China Glaze Sea Spray, Cult Nails Princess, and Butter London Lady Muck as my sky. I pulled out the only three green stripers I own to use for leaves: LA Colors Art Deco Bright Green, Kiss Nail Art Paint Beach Green, and LA Colors Art Deco Green Glitter. For my flowers, I chose Finger Paints Pop Art Purple.



My inspiration was the design Maria did in her Small Yellow Spring Flowers post. Here's how my version turned out (with topcoat, because I had the idea that would sort of meld the elements together):





I didn't have my computer up at the time I was doing this (and reading blog posts on my phone is too hard on my eyes), so I worked from memory. I would like to say that's the reason my interpretation doesn't have as much detail as Maria's original (no clouds, no shimmery highlights on my flowers, fewer flowers altogether in part because my dots are not so small), but I think it's more that I'll need a lot more practice to be able to work so much into one design as she routinely does. Still, my garden was fun to look at, and the flowers even coordinated with the dress I was wearing that day.



I can't promise new nail art every week, but I do hope to bypass that voice, the "better to swatch than possibly waste time making bad art" one, more often, because it's fun to see what happens.