31 Day Challenge - inspired by art

A while back I saw some very cool manuscript nail art from Break Rules Not Nails. I wanted to try something similar for this challenge. A while back, I'd stumbled on an article about a popular and charmingly odd medieval manuscript theme: knights fighting against snails. I found an image I thought I could fit on my nails from an article about knights and snails called Snail Jousting. The article talks a bit about the role of knights fighting snails, and the blog Hunting For Snails has more images and more information if you're keen to learn more.

Here's the image I chose:

Knight jousts snail, Frontispiece to Le livre des enseignments des visces et des vertus France, N.(Picardy)(From the British Library Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts)

I started by painting my nails white, as the decals are a bit transparent. I took the water decal I'd printed earlier of the illustration, cut it to fit on each nail, and then topcoated it to stick them on. I finished with OPI's matte topcoat to match the pages of a book.

Because my nails are so curved the image is not a smooth from one nail to the next as I'd hoped. Still, medieval knight vs. snail art on my nails = sweet.

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