MANI MONDAY: Back To School Hogwarts House Nails
Be warned, this is not the usual Mani Monday format that I employ....
Obviously this year's Back To School is distinctly different from other years, but for me - a very much grown adult woman - whenever I think of back to school, I think about Hogwarts. In fact, I pretty much marathon all of the HP films every fall (and am halfway through my annual rewatch as I write this), curled up on the couch and just forever enjoying them. Now, obviously, this year some things have shifted in our consciousness when it comes to Harry Potter as well, but as a huge fan of the books I've decided to distinctly separate the author from the work when it comes to my love for it and my... distaste for some of the ways that she chooses to use the microphone that its success has given her. I felt like I had to clarify that - my love for the Harry Potter universe does not mean that I accept or excuse JK Rowling's problematic behaviors and statements. For me, what has always called to me about Harry Potter is that sense that it represents equality and the fact that heroes are made from experiences, and that if you fight hard enough good can win over evil and bigotry and that's where I choose to keep in my mind.
For quite a while now I've had this set of Harry Potter themed plates that I got from Aliexpress in my collection and I've only ever used them once, so when I decided to do Back To Hogwarts themed nails, I went all out and instead of just doing one mani, I did four... one for each house!
Keep reading to take a look.
No one who knows me is the least bit surprised that I'm a Ravenclaw on literally every quiz I've ever taken on the matter. I'm bookish, obsessed with learning and understanding things, and sometimes a bit of an annoying know-it-all, so it's really no surprise. I also really, really love the pairing of blue & bronze - although for the purposes of this mani, that proved to be a little bit less than ideal.
For this mani, I started with a base of two coats of Sinful Colors Navy I Do. Next, I had to figure out what the closest stampable polish I had in my collection to bronze was and ultimately I went with a rose gold in the form of Maniology's Magic Hour.
The stamping is really basically the same in each mani, with only the accent nail being different. For all four mani's I used hehe029 for the pointer and pinkie fingers along with hehe030 for the middle finger. For this one, I reached for the hehe028 Ravenclaw themed plate from the collection for my ring finger and went with this plaid image since that really seemed to work for Ravenclaw for me.
It's always funny to me that pretty much all of the main characters in the Harry Potter stories are Griffindor's, because it is my personal least favorite house and the one I'm probably the furthest away from being. It's also my least favorite colour combination, oddly enough. Crimson & Gold is, by far, the most pretentious of all of the colour pairings, but also... looks pretty good together, doesn't it? Ugh, Griffindor.
Choosing a crimson polish for this mani proved... trickier than I anticipated, but ultimately I went with Wet N Wild Megalast Polish in Haze Of Love because it had the right amount of warmth and depth that I was looking for - I didn't want a bright red. For the stamping polish, I used Born Pretty Store In Fire for that classic yellow gold look.
For my ring finger on this nail, I went with this sort of baroque patter image from the hehe026 Griffindor themed plate because it just... felt Griffindorish. I also felt like the baroque pattern really sang in this colour combination.
Finding the right green for Slitherin, even though I have a fairly extensive collection of green polishes in my collection, ended up being a little trickier than I thought, but I wanted to do it justice. One of my best friends is a Slitherin, which I learned a few years ago when we went to Wizarding World for her 30th birthday, and I just couldn't let me friend down, now could I? (Am I taking this house thing too seriously right now? Probably. Don't care!)
It really was a bit of a trick to find the right green for the Slitherin mani, but ultimately I ended up going with 2 coats of OPI's Envy The Adventure from their holiday collection from a couple of years ago. It had enough yellow in the base and the right depth to feel sort of serpentine to me. (Did I think way too hard about choosing colours for these mani's? Probably.) I paired this with Sally Hansen's Silver Stallion from their Insta Dri line because as silver polishes for stamping go, it's much less of a pain to work with than most others.
The image I chose from the hehe027 Slitherin themed stamping plate was the one that, again, felt the most serpentine to me - there was just something about the movement of the design that sort of slithered.
I'm just going to say it... Hufflepuff gets the shaft, but I love them. In fact, both my partner and my very best friend in the world are both Hufflepuffs - and yes, I did make my partner, who cares very little about such things and had never even seen the HP movies until he met me, take the Pottermore quiz even though his Hufflepuffdom is pretty clear in his entire being. They also get the shaft in that they're the only house that doesn't have a metallic in their pairing. Couldn't it have been steel? Or even Onyx? Nope. Yellow and black. BOO! So I cheated for the sake of consistency in these four mani's.
I was going to do black and yellow, both in creams, but I just couldn't bring myself to it, so I went for the same gold metallic stamping polish that I used for the Griffindor nails and paired it with Starrily's Vantablack* (my favorite black ever - available from NailStuff.ca, use affiliate code TRYSH for 10% off). When comparing how the gold polish looks over the black, I do actually feel like it pulls a little bit sunnier than over the red, so I'm calling it a win.
For this mani, I used the sort of wiggly lines from the hehe029 stamping plate because... let's face it, Hufflepuff's are the stoners of Hogwarts and this is the most stoneriest image on that plate. I don't know, this is just how my brain works....
There's something about delving into the Harry Potter universe that feels comfortable and exciting to me, no matter how old I get or how many times I've read the books and seen the movies and there's something about the fall that makes me just want to sink back into that world.
Be sure to head over to Cosmetic Proof and See The World In PINK today to check out what they've got on their nails for this week's #CBBxManiMonday!
Thanks for reading!
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