Monday, January 12, 2015

The Digital Dozen does Fairy Tales - Day 1: The Ugly Duckling

Nothing to Disclose

Hello, all! I am so excited about this upcoming week because it's time for another week of posting with The Digital Dozen ladies! We're starting off the new year by welcoming SIX immensely talented ladies to our little DD family and I'm so excited to see how they take on each month's challenges.

This month's theme is all about Fairy Tales and I was initially really excited about this theme...and now I'm feeling intimidated by it! There are SO MANY fairy tales to choose from and so many interpretations to consider. I figured I'd start off with something cutesy and settled on the classic fairy tale of The Ugly Ducking!


I'm sure you all know the general story, but basically, a mother duck watches all her eggs hatch into adorable little ducklings...but the last one comes out, well, ugly. As the story progresses, the readers find out that the ugly 'duckling' was actually an ugly swanling (or cygnet) and grows into a beautiful swan. I've always enjoyed this story and think it's pretty incredible that it's been around since 1844 when Hans Christian Andersen first wrote it.


I always love painting landscape looks and since I haven't really done nail art since last DD week, it felt wonderful painting this mani. I wanted to go for a more illustrative look and I think I like how these turned out. I kept it simple and didn't do any crazy interpretations of the story, but hopefully there will be some time for that the rest of the week.


I used a base of Zoya's Boy Toi (ugh, every time I see that name I hate it more) and then did all the detailing with acrylic paints. I started with the background first - water, cattails, and bushes in the back - then followed it up with the ducks swimming in the water in the foreground and a matte top coat. Nothing too crazy, but it did require me to use a steady hand that was out of practice.

What do you think of this look? Do you have a favorite fairy tale that you'd like someone from the DD to do this week? I hope you'll all take a some time to check out the other ladies' looks for today via the inlinkz below and be sure to welcome the new ladies to the group :)

Happy Polishing :)