Manicure Monday (41): Daughter of Smoke and Bone

Thanks for stopping by today's Manicure Monday post. Manicure Monday is a weekly feature that combines my love of nail polish and reading. Each week I will show you what I am reading along with a matching book manicure. If you create your own bookish manicure, I'd love to know about it so please leave a link in the comments below.

Hi, guys! It's been two long weeks since my last Manicure Monday post. I went on vacation and, even though I brought my nail supplies with me, did not have time to give myself any bookish manicure. But I am back now and am excited to show you some nail art!

This week's book is Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor. I have been meaning to read this book for ages and it finally took it being chosen as the YABC book club selection for me to start it. I pretty much loved the book. It's wildly imaginative with fantastic, complex characters and no one writes the way that Laini Taylor does. I cannot wait to read the next book in the series. 

For this look, I knew I wanted to incorporate the feathers from the mask into my manicure. The technique is pretty simple, though it does take some practice to get it looking good. First steps were to paint on my base color. I could not find any blue feathers that matched so I decided to reverse the colors and do black feathers with a blue background. For the blue, I used 3 coats of Wet N Wild Teal or No Teal with one coat of New York Summer Hot Baby Blue. You could get away with using just one color but the Wet N Wild was a little too green so I added the blue layer to get it closer to the shade on the cover. After this dries, apply top coat and lay the part of the feather that you want on your nail over it, while it's still wet. Press down slightly and trim to fit your nail. One or two more coats of top coat are added to get a smooth finish.

On my index finger, I used the same base colors but decided to paint them like the feathers close to the eyes on the cover. I made small, irregular shapes with dark teal acrylic paint. Once that was dry, I added smaller dots of color within the dark blue with silver nail polish.

Finally, for my thumb and pinkie finger, I decided to incorporate that hamsas the Karou has on her palms. I used OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls as the white base and then used acrylic paints to draw the hamsas. 

As you can see, the one on my pinkie isn't quite as clean as the one on my thumb, but I was too lazy to do it over again. So that's today's bookish manicure. Hope you guys liked it. Let me know what you think in the comments below and I'll see you next Monday with a new manicure!

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