Cat’s Cradle Manicure: November’s NCC #1

Happy November! It feels like it was just summer, and now it’s dangerously close to Christmas – craziness! This month, the Nail Challenge Collaborative theme is “Manicures Inspired by Books.” For my first look, I’ve chosen as inspiration one of my all-time favorite books by my favorite author, Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut.

If you aren’t familiar with the book or Vonnegut in general, he writes satirical science fiction as a vessel for social and political criticism of the late 1900s. I adore all his books, and Cat’s Cradle is easily in my top three. It’s loosely about a mad scientist’s creation, “ice-nine,” which is capable of freezing the world and ending it all. But it really is so much more than that, so I highly recommend reading it!

But anyways you’re here to see manicures not hear me geek out over my favorite author, so here it is:

My Cat’s Cradle-inspired manicure

My ring finger was inspired by the book cover, and the other nails are modeled after the frozen look of ice-nine.

Here’s what the book cover looks like:

Book cover

How I did this manicure:

• Ring finger:
  • Base color: Polish My Life Pink Sandals… a perfect pastel baby pink creme
  • Taped off the V and used A England Saint George… an amazing almost forest green holo
  • Freehanded the horizontal stripes with Julep Cleopatra… a matte/satin black (PS – it’s difficult using matte polishes in nail art. If it’s not perfect on the first swipe, going over it looks messy!)
• Other nails:
  • Base color: Sephora Formula X White Matter… a decent white polish but far from my favorite. I feel like I need to keep all my white polishes in rotation though, so I used it 🙂
  • Used saran wrap to dab on:
    • Barry M Damson… a goooorgeous cornflower blue creme
    • Barry M Blueberry… a pretty pastel blue creme that’s very similar in color to Essie Bikini So Teeny without the shimmer but with a formula that’s a million times better!
  • A light layer of China Glaze Fairy Dust

So what do you think of this mani? I actually really like the geometric look of my ring finger. Maybe I’ll do that using different colors sometime! Have you read Cat’s Cradle or other Vonnegut books?

Check out more manis inspired by books by the NCC ladies: