Remember, remember the 5th of November, the gun powder treason and plot. I know of no reason why the gun powder treason should ever be forgot…

So if this week goes anything according to plan I’m going to be clearing some decks — starting with a request!  I got this one last month (around Mardi Gras madness — if anybody sent an email during that marathon of crazy, that’s about where I am on the list so yours should be coming up soon) asking for a V for Vendetta manicure, which worked out perfectly since I’ve been wanting to practice lettering more.  The round characters are still killing me, but I’m getting there.

Neat trick I figured out though: since I’m painting with acrylic, it dries really fast and will flake/scratch if you futz with it at all.  On the rounded letters — the R, O and Gs especially — I blew out some of the curves and holes trying to use the long detail brush (turns out that short, 2-3 bristle brush was the way to go here).  But using the pointy end from my dotting tool set (if you’ve got it, it’s the one with the white ribbon threaded through it and just a point, no ball) I was able to go in and scratch out some of the areas where I screwed up to rope the lettering back into place.  Neat!

Anyway!  Put the red rose framed in a black shadow on the pinky (easy as ever, love doing these flowers — there’s a quick tutorial for them if you haven’t seen it yet), a shadowy version of V on the ring (again, stupid easy, just a black shape with some grey hilights), V with the Guy Fawkes mask on the middle, and the Orwellian “Strength Through Unity, Unity Through Faith” slogan that’s plastered all over the city with, of course, the V tag on the index.  That’s a lotta V.  And not the True Blood kind.

The middle finger is straight acrylic, the ring and pinky have Kleancolor Metallic Black in the background (with some Kleancolor Silver sponged in like a street light for contrast on the ring), and the sign on the index finger uses sponged Color Club Soft As Cashmere and China Glaze Knotty for the uneven coloring of old weathered paper… with some sparkles, because I can.  :)

In all, pretty happy with how it turned out!  I think having one nail that was really challenging and then a couple that were ridiculously easy helped balance the effort and make it more fun than struggle, you know?