Traditions -> Clothing and Ornaments

Ancient Cosmetic(2) Dyeing Fingernails

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Select red garden balsam petals, pound them in a mortar and add a pinch of alum. Cleanse your fingernails in your chamber and apply the mixture to them. Bind them with a piece of silk and let the mixture set overnight. At the first application the colour is pale, but after three to five treatments it will be dark as rouge and will not wash away. It will fade by the time the fingernails are trimmed in ten days.

When the garden balsams turn red, embroidery girls extract the juice to dye their fingernails.

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