For the last two weeks wild fires have been raging all over Eastern Washington, which is where I live. In the last 5 days the smoke in my area has be exceptionally thick, due to the fact that we had a lightning storm on the 14th that sparked a few fires and some are still going strong. In fact one was almost scarily close I mean this was a photo taken a block from my house:
In the lower right of the picture is where you can see the smoke billowing up and then the smoke blows into the left side of the picture. This fire was put out fairly quickly, but there were more started by the storm. In my neighborhood that day the smoke was thick, but that's not as bad as it got later in the week...
Lovely sunrise on the 17th which was the worst day for smoke I have ever lived through. Living in eastern Washington comes with some summer smoke, however the sun being a tiny red dot, they sky being sooty greyish brown, not being able to see more than half a mile ahead of you... that's all NOT normal unless you are VERY close to the fires. On the 17th most of the smoke was probably from the Chiwaukum Creek Fire near Leavenworth. Prevailing wind blew it right at us as this lovely satellite photo shows:
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| Satellite image from an article on discovermagazine.com |
The blue dot is approximately where I live. Red dots are active fires and the smoke is pretty obvious. In fact the Smoke from the Chiwaukum Creek Fire was visible in SEATTLE. Which is on the other side of a mountain range from that fire.
ANYWAY, I am blathering about the fires because the smoke from them has been causing my mom, who I live with, a lot of issues with her lung and eyes. On the 17th she almost didn't eat because the smoke was making her nauseous, but once we sat in a restaurant for an hour while I ate she started feeling better and also got some food. Once in the car again she started feeling sick again. So we went to Walmart and got replacement filters for my air filter unit. so that at the very least we can have one room in the house with decent air to breathe. Last night my mom slept in my room on my bed because she needed restful sleep with clean air. So I let her. Which is why I was up allll night and decided to paint my nails at nearly 3am. If I'm gonna be awake all night letting my mom sleep in my bed I might as well do something fun and constructive right?
So now to the actual nail polish related bit of this post!
I decided I wanted to use one of my new ILNP brand polishes, because pretty, and I wanted to try negative space style art. As much as I wanted to use Exodus or Purgatory I decided
to go with something lighter since my nail beds are fairly pale and I didn't want the contrast to be jarring. In my opinion negative space with bright/bold/dark colors tend to look really odd. I find that pale, softer colors appeal to me more for this type of style. SO I decided on You're My Boy Blue as my color. It's a gorgeous dusty baby blue linear holographic. So pretty.
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| Stock Photo from ILNP website |
Once my color was decided I applied a base coat, the one I used was NailTek Foundation II, which is a ridge filler and strengthener combined. TAKE NOTE this brand is not 3-free so there is Toluene and Formaldehyde in it, I looked up an ingredient list for those curious. However I like it because it does help my nails stay strong and it also has the ridge filling which I really wanted for the negative space look. Seeing gaping ridge lines in my area of no polish would have killed me. Although I don't have super bad ridges, I do have some that annoy me even if they are minor. After base coat was on I waited a good half hour before the next step to be 100% sure the base was dry.
Once my half hour was up, I put a lightning bolt nail vinyl (bought here) on my index finger, made sure it was firmly attached and properly pressed into the creases between my skin and nail bed. I didn't want to mess this up. Sadly I managed to do so anyway. After I had applied the vinyl I threw down three coats of You're My Boy Blue as quickly, yet carefully, as possible then removed the vinyl with tweezers. I was very pleased wit the outcome until I noticed a teeny area where the polish had gotten under the vinyl. I cursed a bit but decided I didn't want to remove it and start over as the removal process on one finger would mess up my base coat on other nails. I decided to keep going and I am glad I did, rather than, say, giving up completely.
I worked nail by nail, apply vinyl (ultra super carefully and securely), apply polish, remove vinyl, repeat on next finger, until both hands were done and then I waited for 20 minuted before adding my top coat because if the top coat smeared the polish into my negative space I'm not sure I would have taken it very well. But it went perfectly, no smears, no streaks, just glorious glossy holo blue and negative space lightning bolts! After a bit of half-assed clean up I was content to rest and take my glamor shots then veg on Netflix. Here are a two images of the final result:
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| Indoors under CFL bulb. |
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| Outdoors in full morning sunlight. |
So there we have it. the product of just over 2 hours of nail painting, which would have taken less time if I weren't being such a perfectionist. I love them and so do most of the people I have shown them to.
Ever tried negative space? How'd it go for you? If you haven't tried it yet what do you think of it and would you ever try it?
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