But is it art?

Have you remembered the Pure Ice contest I mentioned last week?  Who wouldn’t want to win 100 bottles of polish?

Well, the spirit was willing but the flesh was weak.  I can’t draw so I thought nail art was beyond me.  But then, at the urging of supportive fellow blogger Work/Play/Polish (who by the way pulls off some amazing nail art), I thought, “Oh, what the heck — try SOMETHING.”

The contest says to recreate something you love about your city or state, and I decided to try a version of the Northern Lights, aka Aurora Borealis, which are sometimes visible here in Montana in the summer and early fall.  If you’ve never seen them in person before, believe me, they are astounding.  Awesome, in the old-fashioned sense of the word.  Once I even saw them while I was aboard a commercial airline flight, and to see them while you’re in the air yourself is really special.

I followed a technique similar to that used to make “galaxy nails,” which you can Google.  It’s random sponging of various polish colors on a night sky background and perhaps adding tiny specks for stars.  Most of the galaxy nails I’ve seen use black, pink, purple, blue, and a little white, but I wanted a lot of green.

I gathered a handful of polishes, some disposable sponge eye shadow applicators (which you can buy cheaply by the package at drugstores), and a toothpick.  I used a base of two coats of Orly’s Goth, which is black with very fine silver flakes.  It’s a perfect night sky.  Then I basically started playing!  I sponged on blue, green, chartreuse, pearly white-green, and more black until I was satisfied.  Then I used the toothpick to add some very tiny specks of white.

Here are the polishes I used, and with so much layering some of them probably got completely covered up:

Left to right:  Orly Goth, Pure Ice Blue Midnight, Pure Ice Femme Fatale, Wet n Wild Blue Moon, Pure Ice Mint Dream, OPI Just Spotted the Lizard, Color Club Fly With Me, Sally Hansen Insta-Dri clear top coat, and Zoya Purity.

I felt like a little kid in art class.  What fun!  Even if I don’t win anything in the contest I had a blast.

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