national velvet

In my last post I talked about the different texture trends on the A/W2012/2013 runways, velvet included. Well ciaté once again has lead the way with textured manicures with this velvet mani. It is definitely difficult to accurately capture in pictures, but this mani looks stunning on, and so high fashion. Ciaté offers this set in three different shades, mink cashmere (a soft beige shade), blue suede (a dark navy), and the color i have featured here, berry poncho. The set currently sells for $19 on sephora.com and comes with the pot of polish, a rather large container of the crushed velvet powder, and a brush to safely wipe off the excess velvet. 

The product is actually pretty easy to apply. I painted one coat of the berry polish and let it semi-dry for about 5 minutes. Next, going one nail at the time, I painted the nail with a second coat and immediately sprinkled the velvet powder over the wet nail polish. I made sure to put the handy plastic container that comes in the box set under my nail to collect the extra velvet shavings. I repeated this on all my other nails and let it dry for about 25 minutes. While some spots of the nail turned out pretty velvety soft, others just looked matted down and rather unattractive. I made the executive decision to redo the entire process to see if I could get more of the desired effect. This time instead of sprinkling the velvet onto my nails (i found that the shaker shook out the nails rather slowly), I actually pulled off the cap and just pressed my nail into the jar of velvet. This way, I had a heaping pile of the shavings on the nail that with the excess brushed off, actually looked and felt a lot more like the demo set I saw at Sephora. Im not necessarily recommending dunking your nail into the pot of velvet, but rather finding a more effective way to cover the nail in the velvet powder. 

Other than the few times I had to itch my nose and it was further tickled by my velvet nails, I really liked the effect of the polish. The color is stunning, and the texture was so intriguing I had a hard time not playing with my nails. Another upside to the polish is that while it took a while for it to chip, it comes off really easy with remover--something I was really apprehensive about considering the addition of the textural element. Overall, definitely a worthwhile by if you are looking for something unique and spot on with the autumn/winter trends. 

cheers!