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.

Winter Wonderland

A few weeks ago, OPI Ink & OPI Ink Suede had come up in a conversation and it reminded me that it had been a while since I'd worn any of the OPI Suede shades.  So I pulled out OPI Ink Suede from the drawer and used it as a background for a snowy, winter design.  And yes, I know it's meant to have a suede/matte finish, but I also love the way all the OPI Suedes look when top coated.  I think the way that top coat brings out the sparkle in the OPI Suede shades was perfect for this design.

I didn't want too much empty space between the snowflakes, so I first stamped a scattered sparkles design from Nailz Craze plate NC02, using Konad Special Polish in pastel blue.  For the snowflakes, I stamped with Konad Special Polish in white and used a mix of snowflakes from several different Bundle Monster plates (BM14, BM-319 and BM-H01) along with several snowflake designs from Winstonia plate W120.

When I finished stamping, I felt like it was missing something.  I ended up adding just a little bit of Sonnetarium Snowfall.  Instead of brushing the glitter over the entire nail, I used the tip of the brush to dab on just a little glitter in the spots between the snowflakes that seemed a bit bare.  Then I top coated the whole thing with Seche Vite.  

The light blue sparkles in the background didn't turn out as noticeable as I had originally thought they would, but I still loved the little touch of light blue to contrast the dark blue of the OPI Ink Suede and the bright white snowflakes.

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.