Saturday, December 7, 2013

December Nail Art Challenge - Day 2: Lights

I've got another post for you tonight in hopes of getting caught up with the December Nail Art Challenge. I suppose some things never change because I'm positive that I was useless last year as well and was always behind. 

I was supposed to have my "Lights" themed look done between the 4th and the 6th but...well, it's almost the end of the 7th so clearly I'm not one for punctuality. 

I've been seeing tons of super cute Christmas Light manis floating around and that was my initial thought when I was considering the light theme. But I was talking with the boyfriend last night and we were discussing places we would love to travel and my bucket list includes Iceland. I started looking at things to do there and apparently you can take guided Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) tours! It was then I knew two things for certain: that I was in fact going to make it to Iceland one day and take that tour and that I was going to paint the northern lights on my nails for this theme...such meaningful epiphanies I have! ;) 
  
Aurora Borealis - Source
I'm happy with how these turned out but I wish my tree line stood out just a bit more. I should have gone with a slightly lighter blue background than the one I did, but I'll know better for next time (when I go to Iceland and wear these, that is :D ).
 These are fairly simple to create. I started with a dark blue base (OPI's OPI...Eurso Euro) and then used a makeup sponge to sponge the light yellow base of the sweeping lights (I used Julep's Bea). With my detail brush, I used China Glaze's Def Defying and Sunday Funday and paint the brighter portion of the lights. Finally, I went in with my black acrylic paint and did the tree line. 
For whatever reason, I always seem to associate the Northern Lights with winter time so I felt that these were a fitting addition to the lights theme of this challenge. I'm hoping to have the "mittens" theme up by tomorrow sometime because next week marks the beginning of my second Digital Dozen week! I'll need to be caught up for that :) 
What do you think of these? Do these count as lights to you? Have you ever seen the northern light!? If so, don't actually tell me because I will be insanely jealous ;)

Happy Polishing!