Goodreads member Jennie Shaw loves books and incredibly elaborate manicures. Luckily for us, she's combined her two passions in her blog, Jennie's Nails and Tales. Goodreads recently chatted with Shaw from her home about an hour outside of Toronto, Canada, where she lives with her husband and her two dogs, Pickle and Pepi. Shaw told us about her reading habits, her love of magical books, and her tricks and tips for getting those amazing book cover manicures just right.
Goodreads: Tell me how you got started both blogging book reviews and painting book cover manicures?
Jennie Shaw: I started blogging about eight years ago. I'd developed an autoimmune disorder—I'm actually a former rape crisis worker with a master's in legal studies, so I was hoping to work with at-risk young women and survivors of sexual violence—and then I got this autoimmune disorder, so that stopped what I thought was going to be my path and I had to regroup. I started blogging: lifestyle, letters to nobody, just nonsense. Then I found a community online with other bloggers who had book review linkups and nail polish linkups—suddenly I was doing these things.
About three years ago my interests merged. It was the first time I was mentioned in a book's acknowledgements, and I wanted to do something a little more exciting than just a basic review for The One That Got Away by Bethany Chase. There was a little blue sparrow on the book cover, and I thought, "Oh, no big deal, I'll just paint a bird on my nail." It took me so long. If you go back and look at it now, it's embarrassing how long that took me to paint! But I did it. Then I found people online who were doing the same thing but not really including a book review. I was like, "Oh, well, maybe I can do that."
I love it. In my heart, I'm a book pusher. I want everyone to read! You know, I'll meet that person who doesn't, and it hurts my soul! I'm like, "Come on! No books? Like, zero books?!" Whenever I'm in a bookstore, I'm always seeing what people are interested in and then absolutely giving my opinion and sort of forcing them to buy books before they leave. They love me at Coles bookstore.
Goodreads: How do you approach your blog? Do you start with the book you want to review, with the book cover, with the nails?
JS: It's evolved a little bit. I started out doing "cover-inspired" manicures, but I've moved toward trying to paint the covers as accurately as I can. As I've evolved, I've started getting ARCs [advance review copies of books sent out by publishers], so my reading schedule is filling up! Since I'm not going to love every book that I read, I decided early on that I'm not going to pee on anyone's parade. If I don't like a book, I have no interest in spreading the reasons why I didn't like it. What I don't like, someone else will love. I don't want to contribute to not having wonderful things to say. If I don't want to scream at people about how great this book is, I don't review it and I don't paint the mani. The manis take a long time, and I need that fangirl enthusiasm.
Goodreads: So, you find a book that you love and are going to review. Now tell me about the manicure part of this.
JS: I've learned to streamline my process a bit. Now on the first day, I'll do the book cover's background as my base coat. And I'll do that at night. It's usually the easiest part. It's just matching the background color and texture. And then I'll come in the next day and usually do the title first, because that typically takes up the most space. Then I'll work in the background. When I look at a book cover now, I almost see it in layers.
And then it dries, and I let it dry forever because there's nothing that makes you want to cry more—I mean, like crawl into a fetal position—than when the top coat smudges! The top coat is important, but it can also make me shake my fist at the sky when it ruins hours of work!
Goodreads: That brings up a quick question: How many polish colors do you own?
JS: A lot! Well, my husband made me a nail polish rack, and I think it held 150 bottles, and I outgrew that pretty quickly. It's really been the last six years that the polish has gotten out of control. Then he built a rack for me that's double the size; it is also full now. China Glaze put me on their mailing list in the fall, and that's changed everything. Now the polish comes in the mail like magic!
I mean, I live in the country, in the middle of nowhere, and it's crazy to hear from people that they like what I do. When anyone sends me anything, a message or follows me on Twitter, I'm like, "Really?!" I just love it so much! It's beyond any warm and fuzzy feeling, really.
Goodreads: What was the hardest book cover to paint on your nails?
JS: Oh, recently it was probably All the Ever Afters: The Untold Story of Cinderella’s Stepmother by Danielle Teller, because there were 4,000 details. When I saw the cover, I knew it was complicated, but it's Cinderella's stepmother's origin story! I talked myself into it by saying, "You can maybe, even if you don't do the whole thing, maybe you could do a fern and that one flower."
Usually with those book manis, I only do one hand because I'm going to do a picture and then take it off. But if I'm going to go meet an author, I'll do it on my other hand, too. And that's probably the hardest because I'm painting with my nondominant hand.
Goodreads: So, let's talk books. Tell me, what are your favorite reads so far this year?
JS: OK, I loved All the Ever Afters. The author is a doctor, and how does she use both sides of her brain so well? She took that fairy tale we know and love and traced it back with things like, "Where does the glass slipper come from?" "What about the evil stepsisters?" "How does a truth become myth?" She did this with, here's a pun, a surgical retelling. She really made Agnes her own character, and I felt for her. And, trust, by the end of it, I was like, "Cinderella who? I'm team Stepmother!" I've read a lot of retellings, and I've never read one that does quite what she did.
I loved She Regrets Nothing by Andrea Dunlop. That book took me by surprise. I was not expecting to get as sucked into that. The writing was almost melodic to me. I loved The Favorite Sister, I loved Tell Me Lies, and the male point of view with that one was just extraordinary. And The Map of Salt and Stars was so good. That book was so beautiful; mixing the modern story with the fable gave you a break from that raw emotional content. It almost seemed to have more impact, because you had that chance to catch your breath and go back in.
Goodreads: So, that's a lot of genres! What do you like most?
JS: I'm a very greedy reader. I just want to have a taste of everything, like it's a big buffet. First and foremost, magic. It's like I'm upset that I'm not magical! Victoria Schwab? My gosh, I could read her all day. Leigh Bardugo! Holly Black! I should preface this with darker magic. I will read anything if there's magic. Even if I'm not super sure about the premise, the magic will make me want to give it a chance.
Goodreads: How many books are you reading? I mean, you're only reviewing books that you really love.
JS: I average around 80 a year. My Goodreads Reading Challenge goal for the last few years has been 80, and I think I hit 81 a couple of times. I'm ahead this year. Last year, there were so many amazing books, and I'm finding even more this year. So I'm reviewing a little more than I usually do, because there's so many great books that I want to scream about. For reviews, I do anywhere from about 35 to 40 a year. Again, this year is shaping up to be the most ever. I review everything: mystery, thriller, dystopian, adventure, horror. I'm not really a big romance reader. Again, I need something a little darker, like Tell Me Lies with toxic romance? I'm like, yeah, OK.
Goodreads: Is this still a hobby for you? Is this a career?
JS: I've been pretty adamant that I don't want it to become a job. I genuinely love doing this. And I do it first for love. I don't want it to feel like a chore. Yes, I feel pressure, like anyone who uses social media does, to keep posting and keep to a schedule. But I don't want there to be anymore pressure than that. The sensation that you're drowning in your TBR [To Be Read list] is bad enough, and I already have that on the daily. I really only try to have four or five ARCs a month, however many weeks there are, so that I can still read a book for pleasure, and if I want to review one of those, I'll try to squeeze it in. But I don't want to have two books to review in the same week; that's too much. So, I'm slowing it down a little bit.
Goodreads: What are your best tips for creating these cover nails?
JS: First of all, I have to say your enthusiasm has to be high, because it's probably going to be frustrating at first.
For me, I worked on my tools, and that made the biggest difference. So, I started with standard brushes you find in your average Sally Beauty. Although they look thinner than the brushes that come with the nail polish bottle, they still aren't overly precise. But I worked on my technique with those brushes. You have to get used to the angle. A lot of nail artists paint their nails upside down; I do not do that. I do them in sort of "claw formation." You have to be comfortable doing line work. When I first started, the hardest part was trying to get that straight line. Start on a piece of paper first and try to get the right pressure. Once you get good at that, then move to a thinner brush.
If I had started out with the brushes I have now, I would have been completely overwhelmed. You have to have that steady hand before you can be precise. If you're really shaky, it's going to bum you out, and it's supposed to be a positive experience. So I'd say first and foremost, you have to get a separate nail brush. After that, you could use acrylic paint. A lot of nail artists do that. You get a crisper line right off the bat. I use nail polish. I very occasionally use acrylic to do very small lettering, but 99.9 percent of my manis are nail polish.
Goodreads: What are some of your favorite book cover manicures?
JS: Wicked Like a Wildfire: That cover was my favorite cover of 2017, absolutely stunning. I also loved one from early on, Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things by Jenny Lawson, because there's Rory the Raccoon. I was so proud of his little teeth; that was the first time I thought I could do finer details like Rory's tiny little teeth. Oh, The Fireman by Joe Hill! That turned out really well. Then She Was Gone by Lisa Jewell. Anything with a matte finish! I'm loving this trend of matte covers. There's something so slick about them and ominous. And matte nails, it's amazing how putting that top coat on changes the whole feel of the photo. Take out the light! I just posted The Outsider by Stephen King; I liked that one as well.
Goodreads: So, you spend all this time on these elaborate manicures, but how long do they last?
JS: Oh, anywhere from 24 to 48 hours.
Goodreads: That's heartbreaking!
JS: I know! There's a part of me that does get sad to take it off. But I'm excited about the next thing at that point. It's not like there's a lull. I'll already be 150, 200 pages into another book, and hopefully be jazzed about it and will start planning out what I'm going to do. I'll start studying the book cover to figure out how I can break it down into four little tiny canvases.
Friend Jennie Shaw on Goodreads and check out her blog, Jennie's Nails and Tales.
Check out more recent blogs:
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posted by Cybil on July, 06
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