Polish Days - To Boldly Go

Captain's Log:
Stardate 11.06.2013. Our orders for this mission was to create a mani around the theme "To Boldly Go". As I type, that mission is nearing completion, left only with the task of the polish drying and this post to be uploaded. It has been an eventful journey. I faced many mishaps along the way: paint drying too fast, accidental bumps and nicks, my dotting tool failing me. But still I prevailed and I am happy to report, that mission complete.

...............................

Anyone who knows me well knows that I'm a HUGE trekkie! Heck, I even attended the Trek Convention in Vegas, so this Polish Days theme is right up my alley! (No, I didn't dress up. Yes, I took pics with some of the actors!)

The theme is "To Boldly Go" and since that is a line in the opening credits uttered by my favourite Star Trek captain Jean-Luc Picard (as well as Captain Kirk in 'The Original Series'), I decided to take the theme literally and create a Star Trek themed mani!

Engage!

If it isn't already apparent to you, these are the uniforms of the four Star Trek captains (the only four I recognise in my books anyway), that followed creator Gene Roddenberry's original vision of the show most closely. All four series followed similar show structures with characters that shared similar moral compasses and beliefs. I have my favourites from each of the series but for this mani, I focused on the different uniforms of each of the captains.

Something's missing though. And I had to put it right.

Aahhh, much better! Really completes the look! What's a Starfleet captain without his comms badge? ;)

For simplicity's sake, I only mixed one batch of skin-toned paint for all four looks. Felt that this provided the best colour contrast to the uniform as well.




      Another view (without flash)

Here are the original photos that served as my inspirations: 

I'm really chuffed I managed to pull this off (with a few mishaps I'll choose to overlook). It's a shame they won't stay on my nails for longer. But I'm confident that I'll be able to recreate them. :D


Perpetualfunk out! 

...............................

Polish Days - The Number 5

My first foray into the world of nail blogging and what better way to start things off than by doing a Polish Days event?

OK here goes, 7-May Tue and the theme is “The Number 5″.
Say what? Hmm, after thinking about it a bit, it really can be a very wide theme. There are so many things/ events/ in the world that are related to the number 5.

What I settled on in the end is something I’m pretty pleased about, something that ties in well with the theme at hand and also with my heritage: The Five Elements!

The Five Elements, in Chinese astrology are: Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water - better known in Chinese as 五行 which loosely translates as The Five States.

五行 is represented by the following Chinese characters:
木 (wood), 火 (fire), 土 (earth), 金 (metal),  水 (water)
all of which have a correlationship with each other.

Here’s a nifty graphic showing how all all the elements are linked to each other in multiple ways and the colours associated with each element.

Enough talk, here's my mani!

I decided it would be best to go with a white base as a neutral canvas for the rest of the nail art.

And I only decided to add in the Chinese characters halfway through my mani. So if the placement of the characters looks strange or off-center, that's why. :)









The Chinese character for metal (金) literally means gold so I drew a gold ingot!


Each of the Chinese characters is written in the corresponding element colour. Metal was a challenge! Trying to fit that many strokes into such a tight space was really difficult, even with my deliberately unproportionate ingot.





I'm not going to go into too much explanation. Hopefully, what I've drawn is legible enough!

Check out all the other creations of the creative ladies taking part in this Polish Days below.