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Sunday, 14 April 2013

SIMPLE(R) SUNDAY: Black Day

Hello to my single readers!



Today is Black Day in South Korea. Unlike the Western world, which celebrates Valentine's Day as a one-time affair, South Koreans separate out the holiday into three parts. Technically, the 14th of every month is an obscure love-related holiday, but these three days are the main attractions:

1) 14 February: Valentine's Day: women give chocolate, preferably homemade, to their men;

2) 14 March: White Day: men give non-chocolate sweets or other gifts, preferably at a much higher value than the original Valentine's gift, to their women;

3) 14 April: Black Day: anybody who didn't receive gifts on Valentine's Day or White Day get together and eat jajangmyeon, wheat noodles in black bean sauce, to mourn their singledom.

So, though I am not single, I find the idea of single people getting together to eat a certain food on a certain day to be curiously charming in the extreme. And I thought it'd make a good subject for simple nail art!

Here's what you will need to do:

Materials! Sorry for cell phone picture, forgot to take a photo of this and then didn't want to reupload from my camera.

Step 1: paint your nails your base colour. I used Ain't No Sunshine because it seemed appropriate! It's a lovely greyed-out blue with subtle multicoloured shimmer and white flakes. It applied beautifully in two coats, like all Contrary Polish colours. I applied a coat of quick-dry topcoat to speed up drying time.




Step 2: have your handsome cat take over your lightbox because he's a butt like that.




Step 3: paint your noodles. I used You Don't Know Jacques because the wheat noodles, when covered in the sauce, take on a darker brownish colour.




Step 4: add some sauce. I used JS01 for this, which is a black jelly, but you could use a regular black polish with some thinner added, or you could wait until your noodles are dry and use watered-down black acrylic paint.




Step 5: add some shine so the sauce look saucier. I used Funny Bunny for this, a white jelly, but you could use either of the options in Step 3 to get around not having a white jelly.




Step 6: matte it! I wanted the added heart detail to stand out, so I matted the whole mani. You then have to wait for it to be completely dry. (I used a quick dry topcoat under my matte top coat to speed it up.) This is critical, otherwise the next step will pull up the paint and ruin everything!

AND THEN

Step 7: black heart! For this, I folded over a piece of tape, cut out half a heart, then peeled the tape open again. This gives a heart template, which I stuck to my nail. Make sure you get a good seal so the polish doesn't bleed! Then paint the broken heart in black polish and immediately remove the tape.




Step 8: clean up the mess along your cuticles with some acetone and a small brush, and you're done!






Polishes used:
Contrary Polish - Ain't No Sunshine
OPI - You Don't Know Jacques, Funny Bunny
GOSH - Nero
Nfu Oh - JS01
Essie - Matte About You
Scotch tape
scissors

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. I think I will try to turn every Simple(r) Sunday into a tutorial-- let me know what you think of this idea. If it's a waste of time, I'll stop doing it! :P


J.

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