31DC2016Weekly 10: Gradient

Happy Canada Day, everyone! I made it through 10 days of doing nail art everyday! Today’s prompt for the 31-day nail art challenge is gradient nails. I decided to pair this with another manicure idea on my list – inspired by the TV show, Avatar: The Last Airbender (ATLA). I shall digress briefly & talk about the show, so if you’d rather skip my review & check out the manicure, click here.

Here’s how I came to watch the show: I’ve known about this TV show for a decade now (pretty much since it came out) but never got around to watching it. Last month, the Hubster & I started watching The Legend of Korra (a sequel to ATLA) on Netflix and it would be an understatement to say we did not like it! The animation is good, but the storyline & characters are awful. All the characters — including the protagonist, Korra — are uni-dimensional, boring & inconsistent. The sole exception to this is Meelo, the grandson of Avatar Aang from ATLA, who is strongly reminiscent of the goofy 12-year old Aang. Speaking of reminiscent, after having seen ATLA, I’m amazed at how Korra did not come up with a single original concept; every single aspect of the plot was inspired by something already covered/mentioned in ATLA! We lost interest after two painful seasons; neither of us could fathom how/why this show is rated so highly! Have you seen this beyond the 2nd season? Does it get better?

Anyway, we then moved on (back?) to ATLA and watched all three seasons in about 10 days. I know I’m about a decade too late to comment, but what a fantastic show! The storyline is very consistent & well-developed, the dialogue is generally quite funny, and the characters are all interesting. What a sharp contrast to the sequel! Granted, the animation was not as great as Korra, but that actually adds a certain degree of nostalgic charm to it. The first two seasons are somewhat better than the last, where I felt there were a lot of filler episodes and the pace slowed down considerably. Regardless, I’m sad that I went through 10 years of my life without having seen this greatness.

And, how adorable is the protagonist, Aang? Just seeing his bald little head makes me happy. He is probably the cutest television character of all time – he is goofy, good-natured and humble; he has a big heart and forgives easily; he struggles with the confrontational nature of the war and bears a burden too great for a 12-year old. He fails often, needs the support of his friends but you cannot say at any point that he is weak. The other members of “Team Avatar” — a term that was recyled in The Legend of Korra — are no less lovable. From the tiny & blind but tough Toph’s occasional outbursts and constant nose-picking, to Sokka’s hilarious one-liners; from the calm, yet ferocious Katara, to the banished Prince Zuko lost in confusion & self-doubt; every character stands his/her ground. In fact, the flying lemur, Momo, and the flying bison, Aapa — neither of whom have any lines in the show — individually have more depth of personality than all the characters in Korra combined! If you like fantasy (fantastic?) adventure and haven’t seen this show, give it a shot. If you’ve seen it already, let me know in the comments who your favourite characters are and what kind of bender you think you’d be!


Back to nails: I’ve been itching to do ATLA nails. Of course, I did a quick search and saw that there are many others who have done ATLA-themed nails, but I tried not to get too influenced :-). There are so many elements I wanted to highlight that even if I did it on both hands, I wouldn’t have had enough nails! Pinned on my list of future manicure ideas is an ATLA series. For now, I went with the obvious – the symbols of each of the four nations on the fingers and the Airbender Master tattoo on the thumb (this has also been done before). I absolutely love how this turned out:

Drawing isn’t exactly my strong suit, but I free-handed the symbols using a nail art brush & nail polish anyway :-D. I mistakenly flipped the symbol for the Water Tribes (index finger, if you haven’t seen the show) because I started drawing with my nails facing away from me. All in all, I think it turned out satisfactory, even if I do say so myself. Let me know in the comments what you think of this manicure.

The nail colours I used are: Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Black Out, White On and Sun Kissed; Sally Hansen CSM in Style is Eternal and On Pines and Needles; Wet n Wild Megalast in I Need a Refresh-Mint; Sinful Colors in Innocent; Maybelline Color Show in Paint the Town; and my medium-grey frankenpolish.

If you would like to join in this weekly nail art challenge, post your pictures on your blog or other social media and tag the picture with the hashtag #31dc2016weekly. Secondly, if you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you’ll know I usually add new nail art pictures to the gallery. I will not be doing this with the weekly challenge. These posts will all be available under the nail art tab [Nails → Nail Art → 31DC2016], and will not be displayed in the gallery.