Penguins and Snowflake Nail Art AKA Traditional Winter Nail Design

Hi lovelies,

After my last Christmas nail design, I am quite happy to be able to tell you that I like how these pictures turned out. It's actually quite frustrating to me how my photography and photo taking skills seem to be fluctuating so much recently... Never mind, that is a problem for another day. Although actually, today's nail's were also a truly frustrating and irritating endeavour and to be honest, if the photos had come out as bad as the holly ones, I wouldn't have bothered editing and posting them. I was so over them.

Although - how cute are these guys??

First of all, I thought my blue background was going to be too dark, so I did a test run with two different blues on paper first. All was good and I did one hand in that colour. Then I started on the penguins. Now, normally when I do my nails I do all of them at once, through different stages, rather than completing one whole nail before moving on to the next one. However, if I'm not sure how well my design is going to transfer from my head on to my nail, I'll do one whole nail first to seen how it goes. But I was totally confident in my ability to paint penguins.

So I did their little white bodies and then the little black insides and the white eyes and then I was like, hold on a minute. Something looks wrong. A quick google of penguins then proved that yes, I was wrong and they actually have black bodies with white insides (tummys? I dunno what to call it). So I had to redo that entire hand (which was my right hand, because I always do my right hand first and let me tell you that my left hand was not thanking me for that).

I then persevered, but when I got to the same spot I realised the blue was too dark for the black outlines of the penguins and you couldn't really see it. So guess what? It al had to come off again. But I didn't really want to use my lighter blue as a background so I compromised and used the darker blue as a base with the lighter blue sponged randomly on top.

Then I was out of time and had to out with my mother to pick up our car, which had been in the shop (because I backed into a post and dented the tail gate) and so I was forced to not only go out the house with wet nails, but unfinished wet nails, of which I was paranoid I was going to ruin again...

Finally we returned and let me tell you, painting more damn penguins was the last bloody thing I wanted to do but I was committed now. However, there was no way I was going to paint 10 of the stupid things. So I settled for six and put snowflakes on the other four nails.

By the way, did I mention that I was also dealing with an old, nearly empty and very thick bottle of white polish? Of which I needed to use quite frequently in this friggin' design.

And then, when I was all cleaned up and top coated and I finally felt I could relax, I went and scraped my index finger along my shoe when trying to take it off. Result: A very messed up penguin face. Thankfully, it was on my right hand and so I didn't need it to look good for photos and while I normally touch up my designs if something like that happens, I was just so over those blasted penguins I couldn't face it and so he stayed like that the entire time I had the design on.

It was all quite stressful.

Anyway, while I wait for my heart and nerves to recover from recounting that horrific ordeal, here's the list of polishes I used:

Snow Me White by Sinful Colors (white)

Endless Blue by Sinful Colors (dark blue)

Shade 12 by BC Company (light blue, pictured)

Black Out by Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear (black)

Some Like It Hot by Face of Australia (orange)

Shade 17 by BC Company (green)

Lady in Red by Face of Australia (red)

And it was all finished with a coat of Poshe's Super Fast Drying Top Coat.

And that's the story of these stupid penguins. Hope you enjoyed it, because I certainly didn't, but it would be nice to know that somebody enjoyed this ordeal. If you have any awful #nailfails or general long winded stress-y stories I'd love to hear them, pop them down in the comments.

On other nail related news - I have a terrible case of dermatitis/eczema/stuff all other my right hand and it's very painful and very red and cracked and I can't actually take my nail polish off my left hand because the nail polish remover keeps seeping into the cracks and it's incredibly painful! So I haven't been able to do any nail art for about a week - these were the last ones I did. I have some special cream for my hands now but I dunno how long it's going to be until I can do my nails properly again so I might not have any new nails for you for while. I've ended up with a lot of time on my hands and I even tried going to my sketchbook as an outlet for my creativity but that only reminds me that I can't draw for shit and I don't even know why I have a sketchbook....

Anyway, I hope everyone is having a lovely build up to Christmas and please tell me about any terrible nail stories you have or any funny stories or anything because I need some cheering up.