David Bowie Impressionist Concept Nails

On 13 August I went along to Eden Court Theatre in Inverness to watch a live stream from the V&A Museum in London of David Bowie Is... a look through the exhibition of costumes, artwork and various other artifacts from the archives.  The theatre got a mention at the start of the broadcast as the most northerly and the audience in the cinema cheered.  To celebrate this I created a mani inspired by my experience of David Bowie over the years.

More details and pictures after the jump.

Unlike most people these days I didn't watch tv when I was little.  It wasn't because I didn't want to or my parents objected to the whole concept of tv it was simply that we couldn't afford one.  My entertainment came from working my way through my parents' collection of vinyl LPs and singles, cassettes and the radio.  My parents didn't own any David Bowie but I heard it on the radio and I was hooked.  I grew up in a small village in Scotland which was pretty cut off from the influences of current fashions at the time so this meant I learned to love an artist who revelled in the visual without actually properly experiencing it until at least 1985 (when we finally got a little black and white tv).

The Aladdin Sane cover artwork is such a strong image  I thought I would have a go at re-creating it in nail art:

I started with a base of Beauty UK Frozen Kingdom which has a lovely pinky/gold shimmer to it. This doesn't quite show up in the pictures but adds a special something as a white base in real life.

I painted the hair and red lightening bolt in red acrylic paint and layered Barry M Red Glitter over the hair to add a bit of contrast and dimension.  The blue stripes, black eyelashes and dark pink lips are all painted with a very fine striper brush and acrylic paint.



The design I chose for my nails reflects my experience of the music.  The art and design associated with the music was all from fleeting glances at magazines or tv screens in shops over the years so all merged together into a blur.  The music however, was always strong in my mind.

The base for these nails is Beauty UK Frozen Kingdom with various acrylic paint colours swished over them.  I watered down the paint and used the brush fairly dry to add a translucent quality to the colours.  I sealed this with a layer of Nina Super Dry Top Coat and waited for it to dry.  

Next I added the stamps. The stars are from Pueen44 and I originally tried stamping this in Barry M Silver Foil (which you can see a little bit of on my index finger).  This just didn't stand out enough so I tried again using Konad black stamping polish.  I had a bit of trial and error with the musical notes as well.  This time it was the stamp that caused an issue.  I started stamping on my middle finger using Pueen47 but the image wouldn't come out cleanly from the plate, so I pulled out one of the few Konad plates in my collection m73.  It worked like a dream. It has piano keys at the base of the design and I really like the way that came out on my little finger.  Just because there wasn't enough going on already I topped it off with a few carefully placed strokes of H&M Jo Is In The House holographic silver glitter polish and covered liberally with Nina Super Dry Top Coat.

I really enjoyed coming up with this idea and creating it.  You may have read the long explanation ,or maybe just enjoyed the pictures, but either way I hope you like the mani too.

To see what the other British Bloggers have created this week click on a link below:

An InLinkz Link-up