I am sitting here on a Friday night, watching a gorgeous woman do some sort of phalange witchcraft on her nails with a slew of nail polish and magic wands.
Okay, they weren’t wands. I think they were dotting tools, but they might as well have been wands the way she was creating magic with them.
Her nails were perfection, this Facebook nail guru. I was hooked, mesmerized even.
She started by brushing pink tips on each nail with the ease of a master craftsman. Then she made sharp lines of black and white across each of her nails, slicing like a ninja with a sword. This was followed up with a swipe of sparkling glitter to contrast all the solid color.
Then came the pièce de résistance: White tempera paint.
See, she is a professional nail artist, and can, therefore, manage all types of paint like a boss. She used what looked like an ice chipper (she called it a dotting tool), to dab white paint on her nails with precision. She followed the whole thing up with a coat of clear polish.
The completed look was a thing of beautiful stunning perfection! I must try this! She makes me feel like I can do this!
Now, I’ll be the first to admit I don’t have an artistic bone in my body. My family likes to joke that when they were handing out artistic talent, I was in the bathroom. Probably posing in the mirror or something.
I was sure I had this, though. The Facebook tutorial gave me so much eagerness and confidence. For goodness sakes, it was just a few simple swipes of color. No problem … or so I thought.
I started with the pink “smiles” on my fingernail tips. Okay, not perfect, but also not horrible. Painting with my left hand was a little dodgy, but I managed.
Plus, no one would notice that it was crooked once I had added the details.
Wait … I didn’t have the polish with the thin brush tips to make my ninja-esque nail swipes. Eh, I still had black and white nail polish. It wouldn’t be exact, but I would still have black and white slices of color on my nail.
Fail. The polish covered the pink, and looked more like a three year old had tried to paint my nails. My niece would love it, but I am a grown woman. Mostly.
It was okay, I didn’t panic. I would fix the whole thing with the dots.
Shoot! I forgot about the tempera paint and dotting tool.
Crap! I also forgot about the perfect slice of glitter polish.
That’s okay. I’d improvise, and use the tip of the fingernail brush in the sparkle polish to make sparkle dots on my already screwed up nails.
This was a major mistake.
Blobs, I had blobs.
So, basically, I just spent the last hour trying to recreate a stunning fingernail tutorial I watched on Facebook. It looked so easy when she did it? How come it looks like the fingernail polish fairy sneezed all over my fingers?
There is a reason I go to professionals for this kind of thing, and I now I remember why.
The moral of my tale of woe is this: Leave beautiful, artistic nails to the professionals. Or, at least have some artistic skill before attempting such beauty. Perhaps having the right tools for the job might also be a smart idea. Also, I guess practice might be helpful too.
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