December 17, 2012

[Nail Arts] Gingerbread Man Manicure

I have been doing some Christmas cooking recently and this idea suddenly came to me.  Why not doing some gingerbread man manicure then?  For food safety reason, I won't never wear a manicure while I need to do some cooking for others.  So I didn't do my nails for a week! (it's a long time for me)!

Plus, I did not own the gingerbread man colours before.  I only got a Revlon nail polish which is a dark brown, and I didn't want to purchase other nail polishes just for a manicure.  It is really fortunately that I receive a light nude colour in my November Glymm bag- a brand called Coccolily which I have never heard/tried it before.  I also got another OPI colour in a recent swapping (yes, I do swapping a lot if I can), which is a prefect colour for this manicure as well.

I believe in the principle that no colour is truly UGLY (although I do have preference) and any colour may come to be handy to have.  You never know what you want to do on the nails next, which is a fun fact for nail arts.  LOL


I used those colours for this mani. Left to Right:
Revlon- Chocolate Truffle
Coccolily- Nude Show
OPI- Ginger Bells
If you look the picture carefully, you will notice that there is a bottle which I dislike very much LOL.  I don't even bother to clean it, because I don't use it very often.


This is 3 coats for Nude Show and Ginger bells without topcoat.  I am not familiar with Coccolily brand, and the brush is harder for me to use for sure.


This is what turns out! My Seche topcoat is really dried out..that's why the surface is not very even as I hope. a pitfall for sure.


A closer shot, it is very easily to see the uneven topcoat.


This is my left hand.  You may already discover that I am left-handed.  It is harder for me do my left hand manis than the right one. 


A close shot of my gingerbread man designs.

As you can see, I can never draw perfectly.    My hands are not steady enough to create macro designs and sometimes I got very impatient.  I think that imperfection of nail art design is its strength.  I remember that I was reading the Walter Benjamin's article "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction".  He talks about that the alienation of art from its historical context and the consequences of endless replication of the arts.  I guess that nail art belongs to neither of his classification of arts.  If you always do the design on yourself, the alienation of art does not occur in the context.  It exists in the original context and protect by the owner.  However, the economic power also comes into the discussion, because people can go out and pay someone to do the designs for them.  In this case, the art is alienated from the designer.  It also puts the emphasis on the economic power-the power of capitalism and how the system derives this phenomenon. 

Although the ideas of manicures can be shared by many people, but every single nail art is authentic, unique and can never be copied exactly from the original-if there is one. I like doing nails arts and check what other people have done, it also makes me think about that the endless possibility of human's innovative capacity.  Nail art doesn't have to be prefect, but it represents the designer's authenticity and originality of the arts.

Haha, I was getting too theoretical. Yes, I know I am a nerd.

What do you think? any other Christmas mani ideas?

4 comments:

  1. If you think about it, Christine, our preoccupation with trying to produce 'perfect' art kind of attempts to remove traces of the artist from the art. (We don't like to see places where the hand slipped, for instance.) But for an artist, each work is part of a process of learning. Mistakes are part of that process. Your gingerbread men might not have come out perfectly, but they're adorable and every one of them is unique. I think that's a good thing. <3

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