Polish Days: Wrath

Hello!

It's that time of month again, time for Polish Days! This month's theme is The Seven Deadly Sins, and I just LOVE that as an idea for a challenge. One of these days I'm going to find an excuse to have a seven manicure challenge out of this theme (maybe for Halloween), especially because when I was trying to figure out what to do for this challenge, I had a ton of ideas swirling around in my head and the hardest time choosing between them.

I finally settled on Wrath. One of the reasons I picked this is because I have fallen in love with a polish that I think would be perfect for it...So first, a few minutes about the base polish. It's Consulting Criminal by A Study In Polish; when I first heard about this line of polish, I raced to see what they had, because it's inspired by Sherlock Holmes ('A Study In Polish' is a play on 'A Study In Scarlet') and I love anything to do with Sherlock Holmes. When my eyes hit Consulting Criminal, I fell instantly in love. Red is my favorite color, and I love it paired with black and white or silver--so you can imagine how I felt when I saw this:

A Study In Polish Consulting Criminal

 It's a squishy black jelly with red and silver hexes, and I adore it. Yes me, the one who hates jelly, and doesn't really wear black polish very often! It goes on like a dream, the glitters fall perfectly, and I can't say enough good things about it. In fact, I could have simply posted this and called it 'Lust', because I did, and do, have lust in my heart for it. So maybe in a way this post is a two-fer, lol!

But ultimately I decided to go with Wrath as my deadly sin. None of the sins are nice, of course, but to me this is a particularly nasty, dangerous one. Unlike most of the other sins, wrath allows us to think we are justified in what we are feeling and doing--if we're feeling wrath because our friend told all our secrets to everyone at work, we feel justified in that anger. And if we lash out at her and try to get back at her for what she did, that's wrath telling us that we deserve to make things 'right'. Even if we take no action, but spend days, weeks, or months angry with her about what she did, we still feel it's righteous indignation.

But I believe that we're only hurting ourselves when we get like that. I believe when we nurture wrath and block out forgiveness, it darkens our souls. And who does our wrath hurt? The person who hurt us probably isn't even thinking about us, but we're putting all our mental energy into being pissed off. We waste only our own time, raise only our own blood pressure, and hurt only  ourselves. And if we do take action against that person, we darken our souls further, give away our integrity, and turn into the very type of person we're angry at to start with. Of course, when I find myself getting angry about something, these things are easier to say than to follow! But I try hard to remember them and to act accordingly.

In my manicure, the black polish symbolizes the darkness of the soul when we're angry, and the red and silver glitters symbolize the love and light that we're allowing to get lost in that darkness. The flames are the flames of wrath that burn us up, and the chains symbolize how we only hurt ourselves when we allow our time and energy to be squandered in anger, and when we allow wrath to squash the positive elements in our nature:

Wrath

Wrath

To make this, I used Barry M Silver Foil and Bundle Monster plate BM12 to make the chains; I used Silver Foil again along with Sally Hansen Rapid Red and MASH plate 48 to make the flames.

So there you have it, my artistic take on 'Wrath'. Don't forget to check out the other sinfully good manicures linked below (see what I did there?!?!). And as always, a big, huge, monster thanks to Polly for putting this together every month. :)

Thanks for taking a look! Big hugs,
M.