Memorial Day is a somewhat tricky holiday to match a manicure to. It’s not about patriotism, specifically, so while a patriotic manicure certainly wouldn’t be questioned, it just didn’t feel quite right. Memorial Day is all about honoring fallen soldiers. I’m lucky enough that, despite having many family members and friends in all branches of the military, I’ve never lost someone personally.
My step-sister April recently gave me a book called Nails, Nails, Nails!: 25 Creative DIY Nail Art Projects. I was thumbing through looking for some inspiration and read the instructions for doing camouflage nails. It sounded relatively simple, so I checked my polish stash to see if I had colors that would work and settled on a Memorial Day camo manicure that would be more appropriate than a generic patriotic manicure.
The instructions called for a Kelly Green base, but the closest I have is OPI Greenwich Village, which I figured would work well enough. The lovely thing about camo is that it doesn’t have to be exact to give you the idea of what it is. The instructions also called for a dark green, an army green, and a beige, so I used Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Fast Dry Nail Color Jumpin’ Jade as the dark, Julep Roc Solid as the army (I only found out later that their site describes it as a ‘Vintage Military Creme’), and L.A. Colors Color Craze Whipped as the beige. Yes, I know, Jumpin’ Jade does have a bit more blue in it than a true dark green, but it was the closest I have, so I just made sure to use it sparingly and obscure it with the Whipped and Roc Solid.
Since classic camouflage is not an exact pattern, I was able to just use the regular polish brush to lightly dab on the squiggles instead of having to use special tools. It was more organic that way. I decided that the camouflage would look better with a matte finish, especially to obscure some of the shimmer in the Jumpin’ Jade, so I tried out KLEANCOLOR Madly Matte, which I had not tried before. I am a bit disappointed that, despite giving the design what I thought was a good amount of time to dry, the Madly Matte top coat smeared the squiggles a bit. On some nails it kind of works, but on others it’s more obvious and makes the design a little muddy.
I think it ended up pretty good for my first try. The instructions had made the analogy that drawing on the camouflage squiggles would be like drawing tree branches and to do some from the sides and some from the base, but I think doing them all from the side would be more effective. I like those nails I did with horizontal squiggles better than the ones with vertical squiggles.
After I finished this Memorial Day camo manicure, I thought I’d add a nice yellow ribbon to one nail, but then discovered I had no yellow striping polish and was too lazy to get out the brushes and yellow polish. It was a day off, after all! But I might try that next time. What do you think – would it have taken this manicure to the next level or just added to confusion?
