3D cable knit Japanese gel nail art

Happy 2015! Who would have thought a year ago that my first post this year is about gel nail art??? Not I... I am a bit grateful that this week is a slow salon week (everyone must be too busy soaking up the rays and generally being lazy!). This gives me time to practice my Japanese Nail Art lessons. The blue cable knit nail is the exact lesson recreation and the brown one is my interpretation.

For the nail art I am using soak off Gelicious gel polish that I offer in my studio. The instructor uses real gel and that is probably a lot easier to work with, i.e. gives better results. But I do not offer hard gel or extensions so want to work with what I offer for clients. I learned quite a bit while just starting the blue nail, but I wanted to finish it – errors and all.

In the lesson Jasmine worked off a blank nail thus having a negative space cuticle smile area. I did change that for my blue nail and added a light coat on only the cuticle side of the nail of Sympathy Hook Up, a light grey. Then I followed the lesson using Aztec Blue. I did not mix in clear gel with the paletted blue as the soak off is easy enough to work with. And I do not have a matte gel top coat so I top coated then added a coat of Orly matte top coat. When that was done I started on my other nail.

Here I think I did a better job. I understood what the technique is supposed to accomplish and why you do certain steps. This is just the very beginning of my gel nail art so I still need to understand and learn a lot. I started with two coats of French White but did not top coat and just continued. I blobbed some white on my palette and using a fine long brush I started with the two middle lines. I placed them further apart than on the blue nail and made the line a tad wider. That gave me room to build the lines and also for a larger cable pattern. I cured.

Then I drew a larger cable pattern in the middle and cured. Then I added different sized dots on the side and cured. The whole point of curing as often as you can bear to is that the gel starts to run. By curing it almost immediately you keep the thin thick lines and can keep building up. I did small sections at a time and kept adding white gel to areas that needed more build up. Maybe up to five times in some areas, others just three.

It is true that the top coat will eat up the layering and slightly squish it down. So I made sure I had a good relief on the nail before continuing with my idea. I cured a final time with the white.

When I was happy with all I added a thin coat of Chocolate Binge to the surface. I went over and over the nail with an almost empty brush to get the coat as sheer as I could.

My idea was to have the white shine through the brown, like gradiented wool. I am quite proud of myself (pat, pat) for figuring this next step out by myself! I dipped a wide brush in rubbing alcohol and very, very gently stroked over the nail. You have to work in one stroke from the top or bottom of the nail. If you start in the middle then you get holes of white. Then I cured. One coat of top coat finished off the nail, cured and wiped.

I am really happy with these and so look forward to my lessons!! Using the soak off gel was no problem. Now I have two nail art samples in my gel nail art display!!!! Go Neiru!!!