Jewelry without jewelry 2

Nail art has proven to be a great hobby. It requires quiet time, concentration, learning something new every time and a simple play with colours. It does not require much - a few bottles of polish, and if you fancy, a thin brush and a pin or a needle. There are plenty of tutorials on the internet if you like learning on your own, and local salons sometimes do workshops that you can attend if you want to learn in a group and with personal guidance.

I have only started my hobby, so I don't count myself skilled at all. But I do like learning new things every time I watch a tutorial and try out something new.
I like online tutorials, for you can watch them as many times as you need and learn by seeing, you don't need to allocate a specific time for your hobby and you don't have to spend time going anywhere to get to your class.
It is a simple hobby that one can do with very little investment, and it makes one breathe, take new information in one piece at a time and gives the possibility for a quiet time concentrating.

The tutorial for these three different designs can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwqsPItRLwY&feature=share&list=PLoGiIe4TxmPR2XBcFNHpGUInxzgc2S_I0

While practicing Project333 I've found that decorating one's nails can be easily used to replace jewelry that would otherwise take up (sometimes too much) space in one's home and add to the everyday clutter in life. And I've completely fallen for the idea of jewelry without jewelry. This jewelry doesn't have to use up space in your home, you can alter it to suit your mood and style and occasion and make it fit every outfit and every situation if you please.

Some caution needs to be taken into account with nail polishes too. There can be too many of them, and the accessories that go with the whole nail art scheme. So I've decided to keep my colour choices scarce and only work with the few colours that fit the small box I have designated them. I'll stick to eight colours that all are somehow matchable. I have four now, so there's still space for a few. But above eight I will not go :)

Anjusha

Jewelry without jewelry

For nearly all my adult life wearing jewelry has been pretty much out of the question. Teaching dance, and teaching at the gym means wearing jewelry could be a serious health risk (think of dangly earrings getting wrapped up in somebody else's long hair and what that would do to your ears...), so I've never really got into jewelry in the first place. I do have my wedding and engagement rings, but they are very simple and won't do any damage (I hope) to anyone. And they never come off, so they're more a part of me than a separate thing meant for making someone pretty.

Being a part of Project 333 means jewelry counts, and I reasoned I'd rather be warm and without dangly things than to freeze with a necklace on. So I've left jewelry out of the 33, and have decided (for now) that I'm not wearing any, aside from the two mentioned before (which don't count, for they never come off).

Over the summer I longed for something new to learn, that I could learn from home, and I found a YouTube channel, that teaches basic nail art designs for beginners. I've always wanted to be good at doing nails, and I never previously have learned, having thought it's only for the professionals to know how to do it, and that I wouldn't learn because I'm not that kind of a girl and I'm not even interested in the whole make-up thing. But I figured, having had a look at a couple of tutorials with NO need for extra materials, that I might just give it a go, to try to learn the basic skills for doing nail art, because they look SO cool, they look easy enough to accomplish, it would be something new and you never do know unless you try. Besides, doing one's nails would be like jewelry on one's hands, without them counting towards your 33 items :)

Here's my first tutorial's worth:

The tutorial itself can be found here:

http://youtu.be/eFtkkiV8HrI

And there's plenty more where that came from - she's doing one tutorial per month of the beginners' designs, and number 6 has just come out. This one above is the first of the six. I've also had a go of the third tutorial, but I think I'll re-do them later when the time comes, and just work on these one tutorial at the time.

I've decided to not go over the top with the polishes either. I only have a couple of colours (as one can tell) and that's good enough for me. I thought having 8 bottles would be somehow ideal - it would be scarce enough to not be overflowing and it would mean I'd have to think carefully which colours are the best for me, but it would be enough to do any of the beginner's tutorials for at least another year. There needs to be a top coat (which, if possible, could double as a base coat), a clear glittery polish (like the blue-and-silver I still have some left of which you can see on the bottom and middle pictures), then I'd like to have a coloured polish with glitter bits in it to do very simple nails without much thinking, and that would leave space for 5 different colour polishes.

So there, that's a beginning. Maybe I'll get better, hopefully so. And I hope doing "the other hand" will get easier in time. At least I've already learned a ton of new things, from different designs to different techniques to different materials used. And it's amazing what you can do with a ball point pen and a watercolour brush - things everyone has at home already.

I think I'm falling for nail art - it's a small enough canvas to let one's imagination run wild :)

Anjusha