The Lacquer Legion Challenge - Bollywood Glam

The prompt for this April's Lacquer Legion Challenge is "GLAM".

I just couldn't feel inspired by this prompt to begin with. I am a very un-glam person and I'm not very interested in things that most people would consider glamorous.

In the end I found inspiration on my doorstep. One of the things I love most about living in the area I do is that there is a large Pakistani and Indian population which makes the place seem rather exotic to me, partly because I grew up in a tiny rural village. In my neighbourhood there are many shops selling beautiful imported fabrics, stores specialising in Asian designer fashions and jewellers selling stunning gem-set gold jewellery. It is a goldmine of inspiration for nail art.

On special occasions many of the local women wear brightly coloured and intricately embroidered clothes, often featuring stunning beadwork and rhinestones, usually worn with an amazing bejewelled pair of shoes and impeccable makeup. If these ladies aren't glam, I don't know who is! This post should really be called "Daubhill Glam", but I doubt anyone reading this would have a clue where Daubhill is or what it has to do with red, rhinestone encrusted nails.

As I have recently cut my nails very short I decided to use some long oval false nails for this nail art so I'd have more room for sparkly stuff. I used Jess polish in shade Hot Date (Poundland), a shimmery red, for the base colour. I used a gold P.S. Love nail art pen (Primark) to draw a semicircle at the base of the nails and stuck red and silver rhinestones (from the Nail Art Get Creative set) and gold caviar beads (Poundland) to it while it was still tacky. I drew a paisley shape using the gold nail art pen and used a cocktail stick to place caviar beads individually around the edge then stuck down more rhinestones in the centre using blobs of gold polish. I finished everything with a coat of Konad Special Top Coat.

I am a bit annoyed that after all my work the top coat took the gold colour off some of the caviar and left it silver, but I am still quite pleased with these nails even though I don't think I can really pull this look off. The red and gold together make me think of bridal outfits in Bollywood films. I only kept these on long enough to take the photos because the length was driving me crazy. I have no idea how anyone copes with having long nails. I'd end up losing an eye!

What do you think? Did you do any glam nail art for the Lacquer Legion Challenge this month?