31DC2013 Day 24 - Inspired by a book

My favorite author has been Dean Koontz since the 6th grade. I have almost all of his books. But my favorite book of all is Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I was going to do an Alice design but I feel like everyone has done one. Even I did a Cheshire Cat mani a while back! So, instead, I went with a short story by Edgar Allan Poe; The Gold Bug.

In The Gold Bug, a man gets bitten by a gold scarab beetle and becomes obsessed with finding a buried treasure. 

I didn't want realistic beetles because, frankly, beetles are creepy looking and disgusting. So I did a more simplistic beetle design. I used Butter London The Full Monty for the base and Sally Hansen Black Out for the details. On the wings, I added two layers of Wet n Wild The Gold and the Beautiful for lots of golden sparkle.

For an accent nail, I did a skull. (In the story, they use the gold bug tied to a string and a skull to find the hidden treasure.) I used Sally Hansen White On and Black Out for this nail. Fun story: I wanted my middle finger nail to be the accent but accidentally painted a coat of The Full Monty onto it before I remembered. I was too lazy to remove the single coat of polish so I just moved the accent nail over. :)