Christmas 2015 - Ugly Sweater Nails

I hope everyone had a great Christmas.  I can't believe it's over already.  I only did one Christmas themed look this year.  And actually, I ended up doing it twice.  The week of Christmas got a little hectic.  I needed to redo my nails, I had already been wearing the design for a week, so they were starting to look a little beat up.  But I just didn't have the time, or energy, to play around with a new look.  I still had all the same supplies out, and since I liked how they came out so much the first time, I just decided to redo the same design.  

The base was sort of a recycled look for me.  I had used this same tape mani combo several years ago during the holidays, but for a snowflake look instead.  I started with 2 coats of China Glaze Poinsettia, then one coat of China Glaze Ring In The Red.  I top coated with Seche Vite and made sure it was completely dry before taping off my nails on the diagonal with just regular scotch tape.  Then I applied a thicker coat of China Glaze Glittering Garland, top coated and let dry before stamping.  The sweater stamp is from MoYou London Festive Collection 06, and I stamped the design with white Konad Special Polish.

I also gave my nails a little trim this month because of a few broken corners.  I wasn't thrilled with the idea of making my nails shorter, but in hindsight, it really worked out to be good timing; I don't think this stamp would have fit as well on my nails at the length they were before I filed them back.  

I was really happy with how this look turned out.  I only had to redo a couple nails each time I wore this, because I thought I stamped the design a little crooked a time or two.  I always top coat my polish before I stamp, that way I have a little barrier of protection over my base polish in case I need to re-stamp a nail.  I can carefully wipe off the stamping polish with polish remover and a q-tip, without completely messing up the polish below.  And I was happy to pull out Ring In The Red from my melmer for the first time in a while.  That is still probably one of my favorite China Glaze glitters.

Christmas Ornaments - Christmas 2014

I hope everyone had a great Christmas yesterday.  Just wanted to quickly post my Christmas nails from this year.  I had these on since Saturday and was originally thinking I'd change them up either Tuesday or Wednesday night.  But the cleaning, wrapping, and just general last minute preparations for Christmas kind of derailed that plan!

For my base, I started with two coats of Orly Au Champagne then topped that with one coat of Sonnetarium Snowfall.  I used this same combination a few years ago as a base for a Christmas lights design, and had been wanting to use it again ever since.  On my ring finger, I used a design from MoYou London Festive Collection plate 17, stamped with Konad Special Polish in red.  I felt like it needed a little something else, so I used black Konad Special Polish and stamped a small music notes design from the same plate at my cuticle.

The ornaments all came from MoYou London Festive Collection plate 18.  I used Konad Special Polishes in red, green, and blue for the ornaments, and also for dotting to fill up some of the blank space around the ornaments.  Once the dots were completely dry, I topped everything with one coat of Seche Vite top coat.

Even though I ended up only doing one Christmas themed design this year, I didn't mind much because I really liked how this one turned out.  I received quite a lot of compliments at work on this one, and I was glad to finally use Snowfall over Au Champagne once again.   I really like those two polishes together.

Christmas Nails 2013 - Better late than never!

I realize I never did put together a post about the designs I made this past Christmas.  So this may be a little backwards since I just recently posted my New Year's design, but today is Russian Christmas after all, so I guess it's as good a day as any to finally put these up!  So, to those who are celebrating, Christos Razdajetsja!  Slavite Jeho!

Ever since I picked up the 2013 holiday collection of the JulieG Gum Drops polishes, I've been wanting to use Mistletoe to finally try out Nailside's abstract Christmas tree design.

First I painted my nails with a polish combo I've managed to use in some way for at least one holiday manicure each year since they first were released in 2011: 2 coats of China Glaze Poinsettia topped with one coat of China Glaze Ring In The Red.  I also added a layer of topcoat to my ring finger before starting on the tree itself.  For my tree, I started off a little different by first taping off a tree shape on my nail, then filling it in with one thick coat of Orly Dazzle and quickly removing the scotch tape.  Once that was dry, I taped off the same tree shape and then crisscrossed striping tape over the tree and painted on one coat of Mistletoe.  When I pulled off the tape, it gave the impression of having silver garland draped on my little tree.  I finished off the tree with a piece of diamond shaped holographic glitter I fished out of Cirque XX.  I had originally wanted to use a star glitter but the only stars I had available were too large.

I finished off the rest of my nails by stamping on an ornament pattern from Bundle Monster plate BM-H03 using China Glaze Millennium, then top coated the stamped nails.

For Christmas Eve and Christmas day, I kept it pretty simple by just stamping some holly leaves on all my nails.  Considering I started with a base of Amazeballz by Lacquistry, it really didn't need much else to be sparkle worthy for Christmas.

I had finally snagged myself a bottle of Amazeballz in an early morning restock earlier in the month and it arrived just in time to to use for Christmas.  I used 3 coats to get full coverage, but it was already almost completely opaque by the 2nd coat.  Once I had it on, I knew I couldn't bring myself to cover it up, so a simple holly leaf design stamped on each nail near my cuticle was enough to make me happy.  The holly leaf design was from Bundle Monster plate BM14, from the original 2010 set, stamped with Konad Special Polishes in red and green.

Besides being a belated Christmas post, this was also a little flashback to my nails prior to my recent New Year's chop, ha ha.  You'll probably be seeing some more flashbacks to longer nails coming up, as I have a few generic/non-seasonal designs from the past month or two that I never got around to posting yet.  Thanks for stopping by and Merry Christmas!  ;-)

Christmas Tree Wrapping Paper

Last weekend was the annual Christmas party held by the owners of the company I work for and I wanted to do something new on my nails for the party.  I decided to try out the little abstract Christmas tree design on the newest Bundle Monster set.  It is from plate BM-321.  I was actually planning to use the Christmas tree stamp along with a few other Christmas themed stamps like the gift box and the ornament but I didn't like the way that they were stamping so I decided to just stick with the trees.  I was afraid that the trees would be too plain completely by themselves, so I came across a swirly type design on Bundle Monster plate BM-224 and stamped it a couple times on each nail as a background to the trees.  The final result ended up reminding me of something you might see on Christmas wrapping paper.

For my base color, I used Orly Dazzle.  I stamped the swirl design with Konad Special Polish in white.  Then using Konad green for the tree and Konad red for the tree base, I stamped about four trees randomly on top of the swirls on each nail.

I really like Orly Dazzle as a base for stamping.  I've used it before and I love the way the stamped designs look over the silver background.

I'll probably do at least one or maybe two more Christmas type manicures before the holiday, but I don't know if I'll have time to actually post them until after Christmas.  So if I don't get a chance before Tuesday, here's wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!!!

Christmas Lights

For my second Winter mani of the season, I leaned a bit more towards a Christmas design instead of just a basic Winter theme.  I've been wanting to try out the Christmas light bulb design on the 2012 Bundle Monster plates since I first bought the set, so I figured now was as good a time as any to give it a shot.

I started out with a couple coats of Orly Au Champagne, then went over that with one coat of Sonnetarium Snowfall.  I picked out 4 colors from my Konad Special Polishes to use for the bulbs: orange, blue, yellow and red.  The bulb design can be found on plate BM-318.  For each bulb, I stamped using one of the 4 colors and some Konad Special Polish in green for the little light socket part of the design.  Then I used the same green Konad polish to freehand some wires connecting all the bulbs.

The only issue I had with this design was that the yellow bulbs were a lot harder to see in real life than they are in the pictures.  You had to get really close to see the detail in the yellow bulbs but the other colors really popped well on the white background.  Snowfall over Au Champagne was gorgeous all by itself.  I didn't take any shots of it without the stamping (D'oh!), but it was so pretty that I think I might have to use this combination again at some point this Winter for another manicure.  And I should have a new post up later this week of the design I have on right now, that I did to wear to my office Christmas Party last night.  It reminds me of Christmas tree wrapping paper.