Friday, December 30, 2016

Nail Crazies Unite: Ugly Harry Potter Sweater

Hello Readers!

For this week's challenge we are over in the Nail Crazies group with an "ugly sweater" prompt. Originally I was going to use my Bundle Monster Christmas-sweater themed plate to go with a classic ugly sweater look, but then I remembered Harry Potter.

For those not familiar with the story (or those who need a refresher), every year at Christmas-time Mrs. Weasley would knit sweaters for each of her children for Christmas, and also one for Harry. Ron always bemoaned the "ugly" maroon sweater he was inevitably given by his mother, though Harry quite appreciated receiving any Christmas gifts at all.

My design is based off of Harry's first year at Hogwarts, and the sweaters that were received by various characters in the book.

Harry's is the green, Ron's is red, and of course I had to include Fred and George, as it reminds me on one of my favorite jokes in the book:

“You haven't got a letter on yours," George observed. "I suppose she thinks you don't forget your name. But we're not stupid-we know we're called Gred and Forge.”

So for these fingers, I basically started with a nude base and then painted over it in the appropriate color. I left some nude at the top to represent the character's neckline when they are wearing the sweater.

I wanted to add a thin stripe to the top to represent a collar, so I brought out my trusty MoYou London Holy shapes plate:

...and I also got to play with something new to me, which I got for Chirstmas: stamping guides. After using this guide in my mani, I had to ask myself where it has been all my life. Especially for this particular plate, the guide makes life so much easier. Here's the one I used:

I used this plate two ways: to isolate the stripes so I didn't have to use my lint roller to try to clear the extra stripes away before stamping them onto my nail, and I used the little diamond shape to isolate the "F" and "G". Here's what it looks like in action:

I've always found it difficult to isolate the lines on this plate using the sticky tape or lint roller method, but using the guides makes it so easy. I hesitated to buy them because some reviewers had trouble using anything but a marshmallow stamper and I by far prefer to use clear stampers- and I don't have a clear marshmallow stamper- but I had no trouble at all using my clear stamper with the guide, so yay!

For the "F" and "G", I used this Bundle Monster plate from the "work it" line:

So, on my thumb I put the Hogwarts crest:

This image is from the hehe Harry Potter line, which has some really cool Harry Potter themed images. For the background on my thumb, I used my other favorite Holy Shapes plate (Holy Shapes 05) to create the black lines, then just filled them in with polish on my stamper head. Then I placed the Hogwarts crest decal over top of that.

Finally, I did something a bit more straightforward on my other hand: