The Digit-al Dozen Book Week day 1 - Catcher in the Rye nail art

Hey friends! Today marks the beginning of another Digit-al Dozen week, and this week's theme is BOOKS! I was nervous about this week because most of the manis I do are patterns, not actual pictures, and I wanted to be able to do some book-based manis that involved pictures. I've done two for this week so far and I'm actually really happy with how they both turned out! The first one I did was based on this cover of The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.

I started these nails with a base of OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls, still the most perfect almost-white there will ever be. I use 3 coats, but if you do thicker coats you could definitely get away with two (my sister only uses two!).

My little detailing brush that I usually use met an untimely end when a bottle of white polish spilled inside my travel nail box and solidified all over the brush bristles. So for this mani, I took a little detailing brush from Born Pretty Store and cut it down smaller. I used that brush to freehand the orange shapes that form the horse and his mane in Essence Wake Up!. I wanted to hold onto the general flowy feeling of the horse image on the cover, but not stick exactly to the image... I'm sure you can tell that the image doesn't really flow perfectly from nail to nail haha.

When the orange was done, I was tempted to call it a day because I liked the way the weird abstract orange and white shapes looked. But instead I took the same tiny detailing brush and Super Black Lacquers Murdered Out and painted on the patterns of the horse's face, body, mane, and the sketchy cityscape in the background of the book cover.

Here's a ~*~convenient~*~ pinnable image for you guys! I've never done a collage thing like this with my nails and their inspiration but I felt like these probably deserved it because I'm really happy with how they look compared to the cover of the book!

As y'all know, I very rarely freehand paint things like these and I was pretty nervous about the way they'd turn out. Butttt I'm so happy with them! And they were really fun to do, which is an added bonus. What do you guys think?

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