Dragon Egg :: Femme Fatale Cosmetics Planar Anomalies and Twilight Meteorite

As you might have seen, I’ve been suffering from Lack-of-Internet-Itis for the last week of my holidays.  The sudden onset of this problem left me with plenty of time to finally try out the nail polish dragon egg made from painted thumb tacks.

 

After lining up my thumb tacks on an old postpac box, I applied two coats of black polish to each tack.  I had the agonising decision of what colours to use, finally going with two of my neglected Femme Fatale Cosmetics namely Planar Anomalies and Twilight Meteorite.  I laid down a rough coat of Planar Anomalies to get some texture and holo glitter on my scales, then topped it off with one coat of Twilight Meteorite to give it the gorgeous purple to blue shift.  Finishing off with a good quality top coat (not fast-drying) to help prevent any chipping, I waited until they were dry before assembling the egg.

I left each coat to dry for at least half a day to 24 hours before starting the next coat to make sure everything was fully dry and would last as long as possible.  I had the fun job of sticking small sharp objects into a weirdly shaped piece of styrofoam, which was consistently shifting weight as I added more tacks.  You need to take a little bit of care when wrangling your tacks that you cover up all that pesky white, which sticks out like dog’s proverbials when using dark tacks.  I wish now that I had painted the egg with black acrylic paint first so that the gaps would be less noticeable as you turn it around.

This little egg takes up quite a bit of polish, and I would estimate I used just over a third of a bottle of Covergirl Black Diamond for the two coats of base colour.  The tacks give the egg a nice weight to it, and the texture is lovely if you’re into the tactile side of life, which I am.  (Give me a clean, warm and well-worn t-shirt to bury my face in, and I’m in heaven).

While my glittery purple dragon bumnut is not perfect, I’m really happy with how this turned out, and I’ll definitely be making another one as a gift for someone as I think they’re pretty cool.

If you are considering tackling this, make sure you leave enough space to be able to paint each tack separately.  I found I had put my tacks too close together and had some accidental polish deposits on other tacks than the one I was trying to paint.  It will also let you see whether you have properly covered the whole surface of the tack.  There were a couple of tacks that I had missed the edge of or that the coats were thin, but you can easily hide these by spinning the tack to make sure it is covered over with the next layer of tacks, but it is easily avoided if you give yourself enough room to paint.

I loosely followed the Dragon Eggs tutorial done by Accio Lacquer, as I already had a fair idea of what to do from my ghosts of crafting past, and the fact that this was not my first foray into egg/bauble-type creations.  If you haven’t attempted anything like this before, or you like to chuckle at funny gifs, definitely check out Accio’s tutorial.

I tried to find some Game of Thrones or Mother of Dragons art to share with you, however my Google searches kept bringing up a plethora of dirty-faced blondes in Daenerys  cosplay with stuffed dragons crazy-glued to their chests, and a whole lot of weird paitned naked people.  I did stumble across the above meme that made me chuckle, and I simply have to share the Pugs of Westeros video.  It’s just too cute, and pugs are awesome.

Happy Polishing!!

xo Relle