52 week nail art challenge - 10: Beach

Hi everyone!


The tenth installment of the 52 week nail art challenge 2020 is Beach. I grew up close to the North Sea and when I was a kid, we visited the beach quite often (it was only a 10-minute bike ride). The water wasn't turquoise but a murky greenish, grayish blue, and the sand wasn't pearly white but... well, sandy. That's the picture that pops into my mind when I think of the beach so that's what I tried to create on my nails, a wintery North Sea beach:

I started out by painting all my nails with two coats of OPI I Cannoli Wear OPI, a pale gray creme, to represent the gray sky I can see outside of my window.

I picked two blue-gray polishes to use for the sea part: Hema 341 North Sea Blue, which is a medium-dark blue-gray creme with some green in it, and OPI Reach for the Sky, a light blue-gray creme. For the sand I used Cirque Colors Topless in Times Square.

I placed drops of I Cannoli Wear OPI, North Sea Blue, Reach for the Sky and Topless in Times Square next to each other on my silicone mat, grabbed a fan brush, lightly dragged it through the polish drops a couple of times to make them blend a bit and wiped it over my nails, making sure the "sand" would end up at my tips and the "sky" at my cuticles. I repeated the process a few times to reach the stage you can see in the picture.

For a tiny pop of color, I added a starfish from Hello Maniology stamping plate Polynesia BM-XL107 in OPI A Red-vival City and after that, all I had to do was add a coat of Seche Vite to seal everything.


The usual mug shot:

OPI I Cannoli Wear OPI, OPI Reach for the Sky, Hema 341 North Sea, Cirque Colors Topless in Times Square, OPI A Red-vival City

I'm so happy with this manicure! It really came out as I hoped it would and when people saw it, they immediately recognized it so that's a win. What do you think?

Fun fact: I was going back and forth between adding a shell or a starfish. There are lots of shells on our beaches but they're not really colorful and I wanted to add a bit more color. So I googled to see if starfish even lived in the North Sea. I was amazed to learn they actually do AND they can be quite colorful as they are found in red, orange and even purple. I don't think they usually are as bright as the color I picked though ;)