For Shari Goldhagen’s recent novel, In Some Other World, Maybe, Freeman wrote, “I really wanted to capture the watercolor rainbow vibe of the cover, and so I pulled out all of the polish stops.” You don’t have to be a reader to appreciate her nail artistry, but seeing the originals she’s working from will give you even more respect for her handiwork.
Freeman pulls images from book covers, from paper clips to chairs to ties to butterflies, painstakingly plotting which shades will work best to honor the source. Her favorite covers “feature colors, art and drawings, as opposed to photos of actual people,” though it seems that once she’s fixed on a title, she’ll go to great lengths to get the image she has for it in her head in perfect nail art form. As passionate as she is about what’s inside the books, the design is key to her color choices. Of Libba Bray’s elegant gold and black cover for 1920’s-set The Diviners, Freeman wrote, “How can you NOT be inspired by this incredible cover?” The resulting polish is equally classy, certainly worth of the “glittering night life and opulent lifestyle” Freeman praises in the novel.
Her book reviews aren’t those of a hard-nosed critic, but a passionate reader and fan, written in a style reminiscent of a friend shoving a book in your hand and saying “read this,” as evidenced by her most recent literary nail art recreation for Jandy Nelson’s I’ll Give You The Sun. Freeman gushes that the novel is “a contemporary to rule all YA contemporaries…Told from alternating perspectives of a set of twins, this book is liquid poetry and art.” Since she loved the book so much, she thought nothing of using seven polishes and striping tape and brush to get the brightly colored lines against a white background just right.
Freeman told YouBeauty that her favorite post, matching her mani to the telephone-themed Landline by Rainbow Rowell, complete with curly cords, was also her toughest. “It really challenged my nail art skills and pushed me to try new techniques, which I appreciate because I always want to keep growing. The end result was exactly what I envisioned, and I am still so proud of that manicure to this day.”
What’s on her wishlist of covers she hopes to recreate? The Hunger Games. “It’s one of my all-time favorite series, and I’m afraid I won’t do it justice.”
Has running the blog changed her approach to reading? Yes, for the better; she reads faster now, and said, “I think that books and nail art are both forms of artistic expression, which makes it really easy to integrate the two seamlessly. It’s gotten to the point that I can’t see or read a book without thinking, what would the manicure look like?” We’ll be eagerly waiting to find out!
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