Sweater Weather

  The other day as I was admiring my latest nail polish color and ogling over my color collecting addiction, I told my boyfriend I had enough nail polishes to paint my nails a different color every week for an entire year. To which he responded, "You should do that! And make a blog about it!"

WEEK 7: Sweater Weather

It's that time of year again. The leaves start to wilt and die, the sun begins to show its face less often, and all those pumpkin loving freaks come out of hiding to bask in their season... their kingdom... Autumn. While they squeal about loving the cool, brisk air, the rest of us cold blooded people must find a way to survive...

Thus, this week's nail design is in honor of those essential autumn items that keep me sane and warm until spring returns. To all things furry and knit... I salute you.

To begin my venture I picked out two warm, autumn-esk colors, one brand new, the other nearly as old as I am. Now I know I've talked previously about my love for cheap nail polishes, but I will admit, when the stuff is quality you can tell. Despite the fact that this maroon Artistry Nail Colour was my mother's when I was little (back when I hated the concept of painting my nails), it is still one of the smoothest polishes I own. And nothing quite hammers on my heart like the roller coaster ride of Artistry selling polish, and then discontinuing it, and then selling it again, and then discontinuing it... So when it's here, I buy it. And I never regret it. 

So, the idea I had was to create a design inspired by those lovely cable knit sweaters that tend to come out this time of year, and I toyed with quite a few ideas and designs before settling on one I really loved. I decided that rather than trying to work with different colors, I would use textures to achieve my ideal nail set.

I started by laying down a solid base layer of maroon to work from. Once it had dried completely I used my dainty little nail tape to create a cross stitch type layout. On top of the tape I added a few more layers of the same maroon color, waiting about 20 seconds or so between coats. I wanted to really pile on the color and not let it dry too much. While it was still wet I pulled off the tape leaving a beautifully texture nail!

I learned via trial and error that the key to keeping this texture impeccable was to let it dry completely before adding a protective topcoat, otherwise the topcoat would settle the layers back down making them almost unnoticeable. 

I will admit that there is one major set-back with these nails... Being the chronic fiddler I am I cannot help but constantly run my fingers across the surface of them... the defined valleys and hills are quite irresistible to touch... It sure is going to be hard to destroy them for next week's nail set. But such is the grief-stricken life of an artist.

Products Used:
 

- Artistry - Mountain Laurel 
- Pure Ice - Scandal
- Nail Art Brush Set
- Nail Tape Stripe Decoration Stickers