The other night, I began the search for a relatively easy Pinterest idea to do for this article. Since I’m honestly not that great at anything to do with art, an easy pin was the only way to go. After thinking for a while, nail art popped into my head. Nail art is easy to do, so I could totally do it. I opened up Pinterest, created an account and began scrolling through the lists upon lists of possibilities. Most of the nail art looked extremely intricate. I began to regret my decision, until I stumbled upon what looked like the easiest, cutest nail art that I had ever seen. There, staring me in the face with its shining luster, was panda nails. Now, I know you may think pandas aren’t that big of a deal, and that there is no reason to be so excited over panda nails. What I have to say to that is they are a big deal. Pandas are adorable, and they have been known to eat people. What’s better than that?

I looked at the picture for a while to memorize the details, and I decided that I didn’t need the directions. I mean, it looked easy enough. It was just a simple panda on a colorful backdrop. Even someone with as little experience doing nails as I have would be able to figure it out. That may have been my first mistake.

After multiple texts, some begging and money exchanging hands, I finally acquired black, pink and white nail polish. I also acquired some nail polish remover to clean up the inevitable mess I was going to make. I grabbed a paper towel and sat down on my friend’s floor to start. There was a fan in front of me to help dry my nails faster. As Hemlock Grove played loudly on television, I began my task.

Since the plan was to not go by the directions, my phone sat next to me with a picture of the nail art so that I would have something to go off of. After staring at the picture for a bit, I grabbed the pink nail polish. Because the nail polish was cheap, I ended up doing two coats. Luckily, this only occurred on my left hand because I can’t paint the nails on my right for the life of me. I sat patiently for about seven minutes, waiting for them to dry. Then, I took my white nail polish and painted really awkward looking ovals on the end of my nails. That moment is when I realized painting pandas on my nails might be harder than I expected, and that I probably should have read the directions.

I was kind of disappointed with my ovals. They ended up looking less like ovals and more like blobs. Alas, I pushed on. After letting my crappy ovals dry, I grabbed my black nail polish to paint the ears, nose and eyes. I did the nose first on each nail. This was relatively easy since it was essentially a dot at the tip of my nail. Next up were the eyes. They were challenging to say the least. I ended up having blobs that covered most of my nails, leaving little to no room for my ears. I did not put white dots in the eyes like the picture because at that point I had given up on even trying to make my nails look relatively nice.

The last thing I did was the ears. They ended up looking like eyebrows on my pandas due to my not-so-great art skills. By the time I had a finished product my fingers were itching for the nail polish remover.

The lesson in my failure is this: always read directions, and just because you found it in the kids section of Pinterest does not mean that it’s easy. Good luck to those of you who decide to try this, and remember to invest in a lot of nail polish remover.