H is for Hawk - raptor nails with Llarowe Shroom With a View

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For this month's selection, my book club picked 'H is for Hawk' by Helen Macdonald, easily one of my most favorite books I read last year, highly recommended for animal lovers, appreciators of gorgeous wordsmithing, and book-reading humans in general.  Since I'd loved the book so much, I of course felt the need to put together themed nail art for the club meeting.

Llarowe Shroom With a View
indoor, bright CF lighting
The base color is Llarowe Shroom With a View, a fave of plenty of folks back when it came out in 2015 (yet again, years for me to use pretties in my stash!).  It has a rich scattered holo finish of the type that you can usually only find in a England's offerings, and a deep taupe base color that has to be one of the classiest modern neutrals I own.  Two thin coats brought this to complete opacity, and the formula was great.

Nicole Diary 003 Owl stamping plate
indoor, CF lighting
To create a likeness of Mabel, the Northern Goshawk featured in the book, I've stamped using the feathers pattern from Nicole Diary ND003 in MoYou London Silver Fox.  This plate was a little shallow and tricky on the first pass, but then worked fairly well once I switched up to a thicker, firmer scraper - this meant the scraper skimmed over the plate surface without clearing out any of the broad, thick lines in the image.  It's also important to note that though my nails aren't particularly long, this image wasn't enough to cover my whole thumb nail, and I had to pick up other parts and carefully fill in the empty spots near the free edge if I wanted the feathered design to be full-coverage.  Long-nailed folks could use this image only sideways, or else would need to have solid skills in overlapping to double-stamp.

Hawk-themed stamping nail art
outdoor, bright sunlight
The owl face image on that same plate was too clearly an owl rather than a more generalized raptor, and the mystical knotwork above and below wasn't what I was going for.  Fortunately, I had a more detailed and more naturalistic raptor face on the celtic-themed Ejubas + Opal Hazlett collab plate.  I used half the face on accent nails for both hands, filling in the yellow beak, orangey-red eye, and white eyebrow streak of adult Northern Goshawks with crème stamping polishes.

Rating:  4 out of 5 stars for Shroom With a View, and 3 out of 5 for ND003 stamping plate.  I absolutely got the look I wanted, with plenty of compliments from my book club crew.

Where to buy:  Llarowe is in the process of re-opening her store, but in the meantime, Shroom With a View is in stock at Color 4 Nails as of this writing.  Nicole Diary plates are inexpensive, typically about $2, available on ebay or Ali Express.

~Michelle

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