The Digit-al Dozen Does Fairytales: Once Upon A Time

Big news, guys - I've been invited to join The Digit-al Dozen!! For those of you who haven't heard of them, The Digit-al Dozen is a diverse group of nail artists who post 5 days of themed manicures in a row, once a month. It's a serious challenge and I've seen some of my favorite bloggers push themselves to do incredible work during those weeks! I'm super thrilled to be a part of it, because I am always trying to improve myself as a nail artist and try different styles of nail art.

Anyway, this month's theme is fairytales, which an awesome theme to start with, and I've decided to interpret it pretty loosely for my first month of the DD. I wanted to push myself to do different styles of nail art for each day this week, so today I went with a grungy and abstract approach with these "Once Upon A Time" nails. This look was completely inspired by this gorgeous body painting tutorial from Madeyewlook, a YouTube makeup artist.

When I heard the theme "fairytales", I instantly thought of those old, leatherbound story books with weathered pages, and I wanted to achieve that style on my nails. And of course, Madeyewlook's tutorial was just perfect for it! I basically followed her directions for body painting, but on my nails.

I started with a base of NCLA Catwalk Queen, and once that was dry, I sponged on Zoya Spencer and Essie Partner in Crime, mostly focusing on the edges of my nails. I also very lightly sponged on KBShimmer Chick Me Out to achieve a yellowed look. With a very fine brush and black acrylic paint, I wrote a couple of sentences on my nails in a scripty font - this was definitely the hardest part - and then sponged lightly over that to fade them. On two of my nails, I drew some old clocks using the same three polishes. Then, I accented my nails by dabbing on Essie Good as Gold in random spots. I topped everything off with top coat!

I'm definitely obsessed with how this turned out - it's so different from my usual style of nail art, which is exactly what I was going for! Plus, writing actual words with a paintbrush on my nails was great practice! (Fun fact: I actually wrote a couple of complete sentences on my nails. The first one was "There once was a girl who dreamt she could be anything, and so she was." The second sentence wasn't nearly as poetic!)

Of course I had to mattify this look:

As much as I liked this nail art with the matte finish, it dulled the gold accents a lot - so I definitely preferred it glossy.

Here are the polishes I used:

Looking at this color palette, it's so different from what I usually reach for! I absolutely loved going out of my comfort zone for this manicure. You can find buying information on all of these polishes at the end of this post.

Anyway, that's it for my first day of The Digit-al Dozen! What do you think?? Make sure to come back tomorrow to see my next fairytale inspired nail art look, and of course, check out everyone's Day 1 manicures below:

An InLinkz Link-up

PRODUCTS USED:
Base: Duri Rejuvacote, purchase here

Polishes: 
NCLA Catwalk Queen, review here
Zoya Spencer, review here
Essie Partner in Crime, review here
Essie Good as Gold, available here
KBShimmer Chick Me Out, review here

Top: KBShimmer Clearly on Top, $5.50 USD here, OPI Matte Top Coat, purchase here