Nail Art Challenge, Inspired by an Artist - Frida Kahlo

Apologies for my absence the last couple of days, after my knock out Arabian Nights mani I had to take a break on the nail art and for once actually wear a design I have done for longer than 24 hours! I got to wear that beauty for 4 whole days in the end and it was glorious! I also needed some time to tend to affairs in my real life too, as much as I would love to spend all my days wrapped up in polish heaven, via mani's and my blog, unfortunately there is another world out there which expects me to be a responsible participating member of society - there is more to life than polish apparently, who knew!?

Couldn't abandon my post for too long though as today is nail art challenge day and I'm in with Frida Kahlo this time, she is a Mexican painter who is famous for her many self portraits. I was a bit concerned about trying to do something from one of her images, I'm not very good at painting faces and I knew anything I attempted would be childish or cartoonish, and there were only one or two paintings that weren't portraits or at least included a few other details than the portrait itself. I came across a beauty though!

This is ''Diego and Frida'', a portrait of the artist and her husband that she painted in 1944 as a gift for him for their 15th wedding anniversary. The painting is all about union symbolised by the sun and the moon, and the conch with the scallop, and the connections between everything with this anatomic heart like structure. I found it to be an intriguing image as despite it's surrealist imagery it has such an earthly feel to it, surreal almost seems natural.

I would be very interested to see more images like this one if Frida Kahlo has done any, I will certainly be keeping an eye out from now on! I would love to say that my attempt came out just as good, it doesn't even come close! It was so difficult to capture that earthy warmth on a little nail and my own effort seems very cold and macabre in comparison.

Doing this mani I also realised that I am missing some colours from my polish collection, like brick reds, browns and other earthy tones, so in the end I used acrylic paint to create this entire mani, and just used my nails as mini canvases with my nail art brushes. The moon is probably my favouite part of this mani, but that guy is gonna have to start paying me comission, this is the second ttime in a row that moon has been on my nails!

Thanks for catching up with me today, be sure to come back as this week I'll be bringing you some swatches and reviews for some gorgeous polishes that you will not want to miss!