Memorial Day

Hello girlies. Tomorrow is Memorial Day in America, a day to honor the men and women who died while serving in the Armed Forces. In national cemeteries, many volunteers place American flags on each grave as a way to honor them. These nails are my way of honoring the fallen.

I was hit with inspiration Friday night while looking through some tape manis. What if I used the elements of an American flag and put them on a nail? A red and white striped nail showing through outlines of stars. It could be just like a tape mani if I used stickers.  It was brilliant. I just needed some star stickers in various sizes.

It was amazingly hard to find the sizes of stars I wanted ... or to find any star stickers at all! I thought of nothing beyond the sizes I needed. Silly of me! Anyone else seeing the problem? Yes, they are stars in various sizes. Yes, they are stickers. Why yes, that does says adhesive gems!! Instead of putting star stickers on my nails and painting over them like tape I had to put these hard gems on my nails and carefully trace around each one since they didn't conform to my nails like a true sticker would. Then I had to fill in the entire nail around the star outlines. It went from being such a simple mani idea to an all night and all morning job. I got one hand done before I was too tired to see straight and had to do the other hand first thing in the morning.

Some of the stars turned out amazing, nearly perfect, while others were a bit deformed.

Still, my original idea came through pretty well I think.

Here is a look at what is under all that blue which is China Glaze First Mate if you were wondering. I started with a base of OPI Alpine Snow and drew in a few messy stripes with China Glaze Poinsettia. I just wanted to show you that, for a design like this, the stripes don't have to be perfect because you'll be seeing only a very small portion of each one. Looking at the finished nails you would never think something this messy was under each one! :)