The Awesomeness of Smaug

I went and saw The Hobbit the other night, and much to the dismay of almost every Tolkien fan I know, I really rather enjoyed it. I thought it was good fun, and enormously pretty - but I wasn't really expecting a totally faithful recreation. ANYWAY, the point is that my current nail obsession has reached the point that when we finally see Smaug, the great and terrible dragon, for all of two seconds right at the end, I had two thoughts. 1) COOL 2) I could do a great manicure based off that.

In case you haven't seen it yet, here is a gif of the shot I mean.

Of course there's a gif. There's ALWAYS a gif.

The camera swoops in over a huge room covered in great mountains of gold, and one of the mountains shudders a bit, sending coins flying. You get a glimpse of bluish tinged red dragon scales, and then screen fills up with a closeup of his enormous eye. It's brilliant. When they showed Smaug rolling around in his big piles of gold like Scrooge McDuck, I immediately thought of my OPI The Man With The Golden Gun topcoat. It's perfectly, delightfully decadent, and suits this image to a tee.

Happily I also have an enormous array of reddish blues, and blue tinged reds, and purpley reds because I am totally obsessed with duochromes, so it was just a matter of choosing which one screamed dragon skin. I eventually settled on Illamasqua Scarab as a nice coppery base, then put a layer of Sally Hansen Prisms in Ruby Sapphire over the top. The Prisms take foooooorrrreeeeeeeevvvvver to dry, so I almost always end up fucking them up, but they're just so damn pretty! I only put one coat over the base colour, and it still shows up as a really clear duochrome (meaning it shines different colours under different lights)

Illamasqua Scarab, courtesy Illamasqua website

Sally Hansen Prisms Ruby Sapphire, courtesy NailXchange

I then attempted to let this concoction dry by playing some Saints Row 3, but lost patience too quickly and slathered on an enormous amount of The Man With The Golden Gun. This means the whole thing has bubbled like crazy this morning, but fuck it. There is enough glitter and shit going on that I don't think anyone is really going to notice some bubbles. Anyway, that's enough words, I know what you're here for - pretty pictures!

Out in the sunshine!

Inside, under a lamp

Also inside, under a lamp. I love lamp.

Inside, diffused window sunshine. I love the colour here, it looks
so dragony.

Inside, diffused sunlight. You can really see the duochrome here.

Inside, diffused light, angled so you can see the gorgeous coppery red shine.

So I'm pretty damn happy with these results. What do you think?