Norwegian sweaters

Oh winter! ruler of the inverted year,

Thy scatter'd hair with sleet like ashes fill'd,

Thy breath congeal'd upon thy lips, thy cheeks

Fringed with a beard made white with other snows

Than those of age; thy forehead wrapt in clouds,

A leafless branch thy sceptre, and thy throne

A sliding car indebted to no wheels,

And urged by storms along its slippery way;

I love thee, all unlovely as thou seem'st,

And dreaded as thou art.  Thou hold'st the sun

A prisoner in the yet undawning East,

Shortening his journey between morn and noon,

And hurrying him impatient of his stay

Down to the rosy West.  But kindly still

Compensating his loss with added hours

Of social converse and instructive ease,

And gathering at short notice in one group

The family dispersed by daylight and its cares.

I crown thee king of intimate delights,

Fire-side enjoyments, home-born happiness,

And all the comforts that the lowly roof

Of undisturb'd retirement, and the hours

Of long uninterrupted evening know.

John Cowper (1731-1800), Task, Book IV, vv. 120 ff.

After having tried out the new winter collection by Essie (in this case, Shearling Darling) and a few days of wearing only one colour on my nails, I found myself wanting to spice things up. Since it's still winter time - although one can hardly call our Dutch weather 'winter' at the moment, it's more like 'dark spring' - I thought why not make a simple design based on the beautiful patterns of the Norwegian sweater!  Which is also a coincidence because in a few weeks, I will be off to Norway for a (presumably fantastic) boat trip.

The result was this:

 

So I used a white nail art pen to simply create some patterns that look like knitting. I do not knit myself, but that does not mean that there aren't  some knitted things that I personally would not buy but do look amazing, like these:

They are so cute!

So, if you want to get creative with your nail art pen, just try out some patterns and get back that cosy winter feeling, that the poem describes!

The Twelve Polishes of Christmas

Ok, I meant to post this blog a few days before Christmas, but somehow I couldn't find the time to write it. So instead, a small flashback on my Christmas nail polish experience. Maybe you are still feeling the Yule Tide joy, or perhaps you'll find some inspiration for next year!

Christmas truly is my favourite holiday of the whole year. All the lights and colours and great cookie/cake/dinner/tree/candle smells, not to mention the presents just melt me. I love having our family traditions and I absolutely adore all Christmas music. Therefore, this year I wanted to include my new nail polish hobby in all this as well.

At first, I actually contemplated to fill our tree with some 'polished' ornaments.. But I ended up with a nice tree, I think.

I planned to make my own Christmas design, but I also tried out some designs from other Internet tutorials: a snowman/tree design and a Rudolph/tree design.

 My own design was inspired by a lot of things. First of all, I noticed one of my family members had sewn the characters of the Christmas story, with this fantastic result: 

This made me think of making a design about the Nativity story itself. One of the first things that come to mind when I think about the story is Simone Martini's painting of the Annunciation (made in 1333). It is a very medieval style, but I love the use of the gold and the text that Gabriel utters, as well as the general composition of the painting. The text is actually laying on the painting in gold relief, and Gabriel says this: Ave, gratia plena, Dominus tecum (Hail, [Mary] full of grace,  the Lord is with you). I like it that the words move towards Mary, like a speech bubble in a comic book!

Secondly, thinking about art made me think about the greatest shade of night-blue ever, that was used by Giotto, for instance in the Scrovegni chapel in Padua (1305), where he painted the ceiling blue with gold stars.

And thirdly, one of my all time favourite books about Christmas is actually Miffy's Christmas. The way the angels are drawn is just so cute..

Anyway, with all this informtion, I wanted to create some kind of comic book story: the Nativity story in 10 nails or something. But when I had painted on the angel (which did not turn out very perfect, even after two attempts), I decided all those kings and such were going to be too difficult this year. This is not only because of lack of experience, but also because I do not have those plastic nail wheels and therefore have to try out all my designs on my actual nails, which ultimately means that I dread making mistakes. But hey, there's always next year!

So this year, the design turned out like this:

 

Colours used (with the exception of base coat and top coat):
Blue: China Glaze Man Hunt

Gold: L'Oréal Versailles Gold

Dark grey: Maybelline Couture Grey

Light grey: I mixed this colour myself (OPI Alpine Snow and Rimmel Black Out)

White: OPI Alpine Snow, as well as M.A.S.H. white nail art pen

Black: Rimmel Black Out

Turquoise: L'Oréal Perle de Jade

Glitter: China Glaze Techno

The donkey comes from the cute animals that my family member made. At first, I wanted to make a sheep but I thought that a donkey would make a more fun design. The blue colour for the plain nails is the closest colour I had resembling Giotto's midnight blue, the glitter represents the stars. The style of the star and the angel are based on Miffy, although Martini inspired me to actually put the angel on my nail. Martini also gave me the idea of the gold colours.
The snowflake was not based on anything, I just liked it :D
 

I hope this late Christmas nail art post at least brings something of that cosy Christmas spirit back and that you have a happy New Year's Eve tomorrow!

Ready for the Hunger Games!

To introduce my first on-topic post: some of these posts will be about books, some about nail polish, some about both. However, all will definitely be about art.

What better than starting off with Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games, wonderful books and films about imagination, fashion, and the connection between two different worlds? I love these books especially because the vision of the future that Collins paints seems very real when reading it (a bit like George Orwell's 1984, I think: dim-lit, sad and full of unexpected horrors), and there is a perfect mix of adventure, romance, hope and injustice. After all, 'who doesn't like an underdog'? I know I like the sense of brewing revolution in a book..

In preparation for seeing the second Hunger Games film, I re-watched the first film a few days ago. And then of course I just HAD to re-read the book because I didn't want the adventure to end.. I specifically did not want to read the second book before seeing the film though. So once I finished reading I thought it was about time to start my Hunger Games Nail Art!
Since I recently bought two colours from the China Glaze Hunger Games Collection, I really wanted to use those, but I was also eager to try out Effie Trinket's nail-style from the first film, which looked like this:

Finally, I decided that I preferred trying out my new two colours and that Effie could wait (after all, I wouldn't want to seem to be supporting the Capitol).
The CG colours I bought are Agro (representing District 11, Agriculture) and Smoke and Ashes (representing District 12, Coal). The first is a dark olive green metallic colour with gold flecks, the second a rich black with green micro-glitter. It is very hard to catch the colours exactly right, but here's some pictures of both bottles:

 At first I was afraid the two of these did not really go well together, but inspired by Effie's nails, I came up with this design:

As you can see, the lines are not perfect, which is ok. I made the whole design without using any tools, just the polish brushes. I could have made the lines straighter using tape, but that would have taken a lot more time and possibly several Tape Wars. 

In the lower picture, you can also see the flecks of gold and green in the green and black colours.

Overall I must say, I really like the design! It wasn't difficult to do and it creates a simple, geometric, tribal-yet-futuristic look which I find entirely fitting for the gloomy and industrial atmosphere of District 12 and the Hunger Games.

I for one am ready for the second film!