three ring circus

This week has been just terrible--one of those weeks where you wake up on tuesday thinking it's thursday, are supposed to be in three places at once, and no matter how many naps you take you feel you are perpetually sleep deprived--welcome to the three ring circus that is my life. Ok, so that tie in may have been a bit of a stretch, but this week really has been exhausting, at least until right now. I finally have had a second to breathe, sip my Starbucks Holiday beverage, turn on my Pandora Christmas playlist and blog. Considering I have an exam in T-1 hour, I guess you could say this is the calm before the storm.
I have been meaning to do this design for a while now, and it was honestly just a matter of how I wanted to execute it. This look was inspired by vintage circus posters--the colors, patterns, and whimsy.

I started this design with one thin coat of butter LONDON's Nail Foundation Flawless Basecoat. I wanted to do each nail different but within a set color pallet of golds, deep red, white and blue. For my thumb I used O.P.I.'s Suzi Says Feng Shui for the beautiful cobalt shade on my thumb. Using butter's The Full Monty, I painted my pointer finger with two coats for a nice gold shimmer base. Next, Using Saucy Jack, I painted the first coat on my middle finger and my pinky. For the ring finger, I painted two coats of West End Wonderland, which is a stunning high impact gold glitter with a hint of red--perfect for my color scheme. I knew I wanted to incorporate both bunting and the big top in the design more explicitly, and to include some of the fun patterns from some of the clown costumes. The flag bunting on the thumb was done freehand with the flags painted first in Saucy Jack, then outlined in West End Wonderland. I used O.P.I's Alpine Snow for some stark white contrast with the line the flags were attached to. On the pointer finger, I wanted to do some big circus-like polka dots. I used Saucy Jack for the red dots and outlined them in West End Wonderland. After I painted this nail, I loved it so much I thought about just painting all the nails with that pattern....obviously I decided to stick to the original plan in the end. The middle finger was the most complicated design I did. I had never done a patter quite like it, and was a little hesitant. I painted the diamonds freehand with Suzi Says Feng Shui as aligned as I could with my brush, then used The Full Monty to paint the dividing lines to create the checked diamond pattern. The shimmer of the gold really made the look stand out against the red and blue. As I mentioned before, I left the ring finger  as is, with just the glitter. On the pinky I wanted to imitate the circus tent so I painted stripes with Alpine Snow so that they and angled a bit and got thicker at the bottom. I added a french tip with West End Wonderland to tie it in with the gold in the other nail patterns. The pinky nail was actually most people's favorite nail--something that surprised me a bit. Then again, a lot of people thought it was a candy cane so I guess maybe they had the Holiday buzz like me. I finished the design off with a coat of Seche Vite Topcoat.

My goal of the look was to translate some Circus themes and some of the colors and patterns from vintage posters I had seen to my nails without the design being too literal. After I finished it I decided it could also work as a medieval jousting sort of theme--something I could hardly object too...it also really made me want to re-watch season one of Game of Thrones....but that's beside the point.
What do you think about the design? Does it look Circus-like to you? Do you have a favorite design?

Saucy Jack     The Full Monty    West End Wonderland     Suzi Says Feng Shui     Alpine Snow