A Study in Watercolour

Watercolour Nails <3

To steal a title from Sherlock (one of the best shows on TV right now, so good that if you haven't seen it I won't mind of you pause here now and go watch all six episodes before you come back) and adapt it clumsily to suit this post - something about summer made me feel like picking up a paintbrush again and capturing the effervescence and luminosity of watercolor - only, on my favourite canvas of all: my nails.

A quick internet search (thank-you, Google!) led me to some awesome tutorials on how to achieve this look here and here though I improvised quite a lot on the materials used as I was too impatient /poor to go buy a new white base-coat and 100% acetone. I managed to achieve the same effect using nail polish remover with acetone in it, you just have to be careful you're not dragging the paint brush across the surface too hard or you'll remove the layer underneath. Using a pearly white base was maybe even a superior substitute to a normal matte white base as the base was already slightly reflective and thus the light seemed more prominent through the layers of colour creating more of a stained-glass effect really.

Yes, my nailbeds are probably suffocating from the amount of times I remove and reapply art to them; yes, my bedroom smells like nothing short of a chemical factory - the fumes from which I will no doubt have permanently damaged my lungs BUT ...they're so prettttty! Ahem... (Someone clearly has her priorities straight...)

Possible permanent lung damage aside, these nails are so distracting to look at - there has been many a time when I've been 'working ' on my summer assignments and my nails have just caught the light in a certain way that seems to hold my attention for the next few minutes. Either I was a magpie in a past life, or maybe I've been hypnotized? That would explain a lot...

Watercolour Digital Print Dress by Mina UK

Anyway, the best part is I have a dress to match the nails! I didn't realise until after I painted them that I'd coincidentally chosen the same sort of colours (Rimmel's Silver Bullet - base; Nails Inc's Victoria; Revlon's Tropical Temptation; Missguided's Misstique; and Buttercup Shine) that appear in the digital print watercolor design of the dress. There is a certain kind of weird child-like dressing up delight that I get in matching something to my nails or vice versa that I can't quite explain - simple pleasures I guess.


Peace and Love
(just beginning to hear how hippy I sound but hey-ho)
Ness x