Hello, all! Ugh, I've had a rough week full of no motivation for nail art or nail polish. I really struggled with today's "animal" theme. I'm the type of person that can't move forward with something until I've finished my other task first, so even though I had plenty of things to get done, I was hung up on the animal theme! This 31 Day Challenge may be the death of me ;)
I browsed TONS of animal photos, and while I loved so many of the photos I came across, none were "doing" it for me. Until this one. I've seen this National Geographic photo (taken by Daniel Bilsborough - here's his site!) several times before but had forgotten about it until my browsing tonight. I love this image so much it's even been my desktop background for a time because it's just so beautiful. I've always had an emotional connection to elephants and I can help but love everything elephant related.
Even though my first instinct was to right this image off as a potential mani, I was so excited to see it that I just went for it...and I'm so glad that I did :) I just love how my little elephant turned out! It's definitely painterly when the photos is (obviously) realistic, but I'm so proud of how this turned out.
I know you can't tell, but I started with a base of OPI's My Boyfriend Scales Walls and then I painted the rest with acrylic paints. I started with a light green strip at the tip of each nail and a darker green one near my cuticles. Then came the yellow flowers, using various shades of yellow and small dots to create the different flowers. I used white and grey to add the clouds and then came the elephant. Lots of colors and patience went into him.
Here's a close up of the elephant!
So, what do you think of these? I'm so happy to have created something I truly love! My week away had me anxious to create something artistic and hopefully I've made up for not posting for 4 days. Be sure to check out the AMAZING manis that Meghan and Kelli have created for this theme (seriously, they're awesome!) via the inlinkz below!
Happy Polishing :)