One whole year after I stopped biting my nails

This time last year I was on holiday with my man in beautiful Rome, and it was there were I decided to stop biting my nails, and honestly I couldn't be prouder of myself. After feeling crappy about biting my nails, thinking they looked awful and disgusting, worrying about people seeing them and dealing with the pain of severely bitten talons, I am so glad that I managed to curb a 19 year habit. I really do think that this was one of the most fantastic choices I have ever made, which may sound a little bit over dramatic but I don't really care, because it's true. If I hadn't turned this corner and sorted it out I never would have discovered the passion I have for nails and nail art. This my seem like I very shallow thing to feel passionate about but I don't mind, even if it is. When I stopped biting, and gained a little bit of length to my nails I began painting them constantly, catching up on all the learning and nail experimentations us ladies mostly do when we're little girls. I wanted to try every polish, every brand and every colour ever, all at once, because I never had the opportunity before. As I became more confident with painting block colour I started to play around with designs, most leopard print to start with as you don't need specific brushes or tools it's easy to do with just an orange stick. This is where I came to the realisation that patterns distract people from shorter nails, something I particularly loved, because when you're starting to grow your nails you can start to think that people look at your nails and think "Why would you bother to paint nails so short?" and if there's some form of nail art to look at they're more likely to think "Cool, zebra print!". Anyway, from there I started to take pictures and branch out with techniques and designs and this is turn led to the confidence to start publishing my opinions and designs on here and my Tumblr, and confidence I me. In both my ability to complete something, changing things for the better, and my ability to be creative. So I am super proud of my last year in nails, because I can now stop thinking about my nails as something to be hidden and start seeing them as ten little opportunities to feel good about myself, be creative and make people think "Wow, that's cool!".

I know this was a little bit of a self-indulgent, self aggrandising post and I'm sorry about that, it's just that when I was looking for inspiration to stop biting I saw very accomplished nail blogs and no real posts about the pride you feel when you see a difference in yourself and start to feel good about something you've done. Xxx.