A Parliament of Owls

Hello girlies! I don't know about you but I've been seeing owl nails everywhere. Sometimes just colorful owls like SuPa Nails Oh Oh Owls! Sometimes not so colorful like JawsOfKita-LoveHim's Owl Nails. There's also those with one owl like cutepolish's Cute Nail Art tutorial. Or those with designs that incorporate all nails like Chalkboard Nails Valentine's Owl Nail Art or Unhas da *micktuti*'s owl nails.

With all these awesome owl nails I wanted to try some of my own. I saw this design on Pinterest first and just had to recreate it. It's originally from Chalkboard Nails and was then recreated by Let them have Polish as part of a challenge—inspired by a tutorial.

I couldn't have chosen a worse time to do this design though. It was very hot and humid; the kind of heat that nail polish doesn't dry well in. I also had very little time to do my nails before I had to start getting ready for my niece's dance recital. I thought I could do it though. How hard could they be? Well, I'll admit they weren't that hard. I didn't think out the color choices very well. I mostly just reached into my nail drawer and grabbed the closest colors.

The base colors worked well together but once I started lightening it for the chest, dotting on the chest spots, and adding the beak everything just kind of blended together.

The spots and beak look nearly perfect on the mint and purple, shows up slightly less on the pink and red, but really just blends completely on the orange. If I had more time I'm sure I would have tested each color on paper before using them, but I was in a rush.

How much of a rush you ask? So much of a rush that I didn't realize I had scraped the eye off my thumb owl and dented the tip of the middle finger owl until I was in the car and far away from my nail supplies. I told my nieces that the orange owl was evil and attacked the pink owl. *giggle* I'm so mean. :)

I'm actually pretty proud of how well my right hand turned out all told. I'm right handed but through much practice I've gotten my left hand able to do much of the fine detail work. Still, it's never as good as doing nail art with my right hand. However, besides the googly eyes on the red owl I think everything came together very well.


For those who are wondering ... a groups of owls is called a parliament, hence the title. Yeah ... I had to look it up too. ;)


Polish Used

• Revlon - Base Coat
• Wet n Wild - I Red a Good Book
• Wet n Wild - I Need a Refresh-Mint
• Wet n Wild - Club Havana
• Wet n Wild - Bite the Bullet
• Wet n Wild - Tropicalia
• Sally Hansen - Mellow Yellow
• Sally Hansen - Sun Kissed
• LA Colors - Black
• LA Colors - White