Endangered Elephants

I certainly meant to have this come out yesterday (esp since I’ve already posted it to Instagram), but I guess that wasn’t in the cards. So this is my first post of the day and there will be another around noon MT.

I live in America so elephants have definitely been on my mind. Fortunately all the outraged shouting has forced Trump to back down from a reversal on the ban on the importation of trophies from elephant hunts in Zimbabwe. We can only hope that public opinion continues to sway him when it comes to this matter. Also that rich assholes pull their heads out of their asses and pay money to help conserve elephants and other exotic animals instead of killing them. Because, yes, it is sadly a strategy that helps raise funds for conservation efforts, but it is not the strategy that we as a species should settle on long-term. If you have the time, please listen to this talk about trophy hunting from the Adam Ruins Everything podcast. It really changed my mind on an absolute no for trophy hunting, even though I didn’t want it to. Life is rarely as simple as we’d like it to be. 🙁

On a happier note, I used lead lighting again. This time I scribbled my ink on a plastic lid and picked it up with some alcohol and a paint brush. It gave me a lot more control so I didn’t flood my cuticles so easily. However, I kept playing with this technique after I finished the mani and I found that a good matte top coat helps even more to hold onto the pigment and keep things from running. It does, however, make it harder to remove excess pigment or blend out scribbles. So much to learn still, but my Beauty Bigbang package has arrived so I am trying to work on reviewing everything right now.

• Re-usable white gel base
• Stamping Polishes:
  Mundo de Unas’ “Dark Grey” and “Light Gray”
• Line-work colored in with sharpies watered down with pure alcohol
• Stamping Plates:
  Born Pretty BP L093 (elephant and geometric shapes), CICI & SISI Geometry 02 (elephant profile)

Well, I’d meant for this to be more green/blue than the purple/blue it ended up being because it’s too close to my first mani with sharpies (Pegasus), but it is what it is. I’ve got one more mani to paint with sharpie markers on this gel base before it’s time to move on and I’m hoping that will end up being more rainbow. I’ve really been liking this technique and more on this theme can be found here. Oh, well. Here’s a last quick look at my nails before I added sharpie pigment: