Saturday 6 August 2016

DEMET: LOOKING GLASS GIRL... NAILED!

German student Demet tells us how her love of children's books and her flair for nail art led to the creation of a very unusual Instagram account...

Demet says:
I am from Germany and I am currently in London studying for a Master's Degree in Children's Literature, which is my dream. I began to get into nail art as an undergraduate student, watching a lot of YouTube tutorials and slowly getting better at creating my own. I remember having a conversation with a friend where I noted that 'My nails don't match my clothes, but they usually match the book I'm reading!' Let's just say everything escalated from there! I opened my Instagram account in 2014.

I have read and studied the children's classic Alice's Adventure's In Wonderland a number of times. In class, we talked about adaptations and books inspired by the original, and one classmate told us all about the CC book LOOKING GLASS GIRL and told us we should read it because it's different from other adaptations. LOOKING GLASS GIRL keeps part of the confusing world we all love about Alice but incorporates the real world too. I was so enthusiastic to read it that three weeks later when we did our Secret Santa Christmas party, that same friend got me my own copy of the book so I could see the amazingness with my own eyes. The book was everything I was hoping it would be.

Sometimes I really like a book but don't make a nail design based on it because the jacket doesn't translate well... but this is clearly not a problem I had with LOOKING GLASS GIRL! The cover may seem complicated, but it's made up of several elements which on their own are not too difficult to do. I thought of using these elements singly, one on each nail, but then I saw the book without its dust jacket and just loved the blue checkerboard design. It had a hand painted look to it which meant that nothing would get lost in translation! With the small hearts and musical notes as accents I could keep it interesting while still being simple and not too busy.

If you're interested in finding out more about my work, you can find my Instagram account at @books_polished and I now have a Snapchat account too which is books_polished also. Apart from my boring day to day life I try to show a lot of in between pictures to show how I build up the designs, from easy to the more complicated. Why don't you experiment too?

Cathy says:
I LOVE Demet's nail designs for LOOKING GLASS GIRL... how cool? Have YOU ever found a creative way to share the book love? COMMENT BELOW to tell us more!

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