Pink To Black manicure

Hi all! I have a slightly different post to share with you today. I usually don't use my blog as a soap box, because in general I consider nail polish and blogging to be my hobby and I tend to keep things happy and upbeat because this is one of my escapes. However, this is the month of October, which we are all aware is when we are inundated with advertisements and campaigns urging us to support breast cancer awareness, in addition to an overload of pink items. The sad fact is, though, that while we are all aware of breast cancer these days, there is still a lack of funding for real, hard research that finds ways to cure breast cancer (or any cancer, really, but October focuses on breast cancer).

I have a friend who is dying of metastatic breast cancer. She is 39 years old (only seven years older than I am!) and has two children and a husband she will leave behind when her disease inevitably kills her, unless a cure is found. And that cure comes from research, bench science, clinical trials-- not awareness campaigns. My friend founded an organization called METUP, which is an activism organization that is bringing attention to those living with metastatic breast cancer and to campaign for more funding to be directed to research for a cure. Today they are staging a die-in in Washington DC and I wanted to create a manicure in solidary. The METUP logo is the ubiquitous pink ribbon, but you come to the ends, the ribbon becomes tattered and fades to black.

This logo inspired my manicure idea-- to create a pink to black gradient on my nails. For this manicure I used Colors by Llarowe Engorgeous, Fancy Lacquer Come To The Dark Side, and Colors by Llarowe Luke, I am Your Father. I painted two coats of Engorgeous, and then I sponged on Come To The Dark Side and Luke, I am Your Father. The last one proved to be a bit sheer while I was trying to sponge it on, so I ended up painting a stripe of it on the free edge of my nail, then sponging more grey and black on top of it to create the the gradient effect.

Artificial light (flash):

I'm really happy with how this turned out and I definitely managed to to capture the idea I had in my mind. I think the grey helped ease the transition from the pink to black.

So, while I feel that whatever causes you choose to support are your own business and you should never feel coerced to give money where you don't want to, if you are motivated to give to a breast cancer charity this month, I would encourage you to donate to one of the charities listed here to give to groups that support breast cancer research, especially metastatic breast cancer instead of just awareness campaigns.

Note: I am in no affiliated with any of the organizations I have mentioned/linked in this post-- I am merely promoting a cause I feel deserves the attention.