Nature is Art

My South Florida neighborhood has a small park that's about a 10 minute walk from my house. When me and children first began to visit this park, we were astounded and delighted to see an actual peacock hanging around our neighborhood! I had no idea there could be a muster, (yes I googled what a pack of peacocks are called!) of peacocks that I'd casually see while doing something completely ordinary. At first I would only see one or two, and they seemed to particularly love this one house, but then we began to really see them all over, recently we had spotted about 6-8 in our own back yard.

I came to see the glimpses of the peacocks on our walk as little signs from the Universe, just letting me know there is value and beauty in every single day, which is exactly why I create the nails I do, I'm trying to bring a little beauty and art to everyday life. It wasn't until I started finding loose, beautiful, blue feathers on our walk that I had the idea to encapsulate them in a nail set. In situations like these, I truly have no idea if I could even pull it off, and luckily for me I found a field where I collected a whole bunch of long, beautiful, vibrant feathers. Funnily enough, since I've completed this set I decided not to list them (I'll explain why later) and I also have not been able to find ANY more loose feathers anyway, brown or otherwise. I see that as a sign too, this set was for me, and sometimes your art is only yours to have.

Some sets take me longer to make than others, and this one sat around for a while because I was not sure how to begin. At first I tried laying down a layer of clear acrylic and laying the feathers on top, but the feathers wouldn't lay in a position that would be clearly seen as a peacock feather. I resorted to my trusty glue, (everyone keeps telling me about Kiss but I'll stick beside my amazon brand glue!) and I held the feathers down in the desired position. To be honest this wasn't going much better than the acrylic, my fingers kept sticking to the feathers and leaving a white residue when I pried my fingers away. I also wanted to make these a manifesting money set, I've had ripped dollars in my art things for years and this was the perfect time to bring them out. They are named Money Dance, for the money and the fact that male peacocks perform for their mates, (I always think my titles are as clever as my designs!). By the time I finished encapsulating the feathers, which in itself was a task because I had to cut the feathers and sometimes I ended up cutting the nails or just messing up the encapsulation. I remade several nails like four times, but thankfully the feathers were huge and I had more than enough to finish my set.

When I finally completed the set I felt so accomplished! I also didn't love them immediately, I've come to expect a certain quality of my work (even if it is my first time trying it) and this just did NOT meet my standards for sale, but I loved them for me. All that gluing made me really feel like I was creating an art project.

Of course for my pictures I set out to see if I could find a peacock to take a picture of my nails with, and for the record I chased two peacocks around for these photos! I hope you guys enjoy! Thanks so much for reading! -Renee <3