12 Days of Christmas Nail Art: Christmas Trees

Today I have a medley of Christmas Trees over a new blinging polish by ILNP for the 12 Days of Christmas Challenge Your Nail Art Christmas Trees prompt!



The base of this is amazing of course, stay tuned, I'm going to be blogging my recent INLP winter picks soon! This is INLP Juliette and it is rose gold perfection! So beautiful and bling-y inside and out.

But of course I had to fufill the Christmas tree prompt so I broke out my stamping supplies!!!



For this look I used my new Bundle Monster Holiday Set, more specifically the BM-S218 plate, and stamped various Christmas Tree designs on the nail, not always getting the perfect placement.





The polish I used for stamping is OPI Christmas Gone Plaid, which worked okay, but was a bit watery and a little difficult to stamp with.



Feel free to join us in the Challenge Your Nail Art 12 Days of Christmas Challenge, just join our Facebook group and follow along. You don't have to do every one, I know I probably won't this year, but we're casual. The more the merrier!!! :)

As always, check out the other lovely ladies participating in this challenge below!


   

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12 Days of Christmas: Snow Day

This month this blog is going to be holiday all the things!!!! In addition to my normal 52 week challenge, I'm going to do my best to try and keep up with this 12 Days of Christmas challenge from the Challenge Your Nail Art Facebook group!

I just love this Facebook group and had SO much fun doing this challenge last year. Here is the calendar of prompts, and feel free to jump in if you'd like to! Just join us on Facebook!



Today's (well yesterday, but it still counts, we're a pretty chill group of ladies, rules aren't too rigid!) prompt was Snow Day so I broke out some snow flake stamps and went to work on a rather classic snow flake look.



For the base I used Literary Lacquers Blue Stocking Romance.



For the stamping I used a-England Encore Margot as the stamping polish and broke out the new Bundle Monster holiday set for the snowflake images.



The specific plate I used was the BM-S218 plate.



Expect to see a lot more looks featuring those stamping plates! I'm so excited for my month of holiday nails! Love this time of year for nail art!

Don't forget to check out all the other awesome snow day manis in this prompt below!!!


   

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It's a Cold and Blustery Day Nails

So as a young child, I was definitely into Winnie the Pooh. I'm guessing I was more into the books, rather than the cartoon (because I wasn't the biggest fan of cartoons), but who actually knows.

One thing I do remember from my childhood is my mom telling me I used to always say when it was cold out (which in Southern California was not often), "It's a cold and blustery day!" Which I still say from time to time. She told me I got this from Winnie the Pooh.

Scrolling online I tried to find an image from the books that would capture what I was thinking of!

So I decided that for The Woods prompt for the Challenge Your Nail Art Winnie the Pooh Challenge I would do my best to recreate, the feeling of cold and blustery day nails!



I started with three coats of Literary Lacquers Always Christmas, Never Winter, which I consider to be a bright blue without being too dark.



Then I broke out my stamping plate Bundle Monster BM-312 for the clouds blowing the wind and stamped that on my thumb. I used Winstonia W-113 for the umbrella tumbling in the wind. Because I seem to remember there being an umbrella in the books, toppling through The Hundred Acres Woods.



Then I tried to recreate the woods and the windy tree, and well, that probably where my vision was ruined a bit. Using some of my smaller nail art brushes, I tried my hardest to recreate the wind, the leaves blowing off the tree and the green grass of course.



I'm not going to 100 percent knock this mani because, well, mission accomplished. But I'm not going to say it's pretty either. Oh well, it was fun to remember a childhood literary love of mine!

Oh and don't forget to check out the other lovely ladies (who I'm sure did much better on this)!


   

    An InLinkz Link-up

   

12 Days of Christmas Nail Art Wrap Up

Merry Christmas Eve readers! Today I have a wrap up of my 12 Days of Christmas Challenge! Plus bonus shots at my attempts at nail art last year!



I'm very proud of myself for completing the challenge and sticking to it. Having something to tackle nail art wise after getting home from work, or volunteering at the tree lot, I just really appreciated having the creative outlet. It gave me something to look forward to and something fun to think of how to tackle each challenge that lay in front of me. Believe it or not, it took the stress away from the holidays for me!

I'd have to say my favorite nails were probably my Christmas Skittle and my sweater nails.

Now, for the horrifying look at what I did last year at Christmas.



I wasn't even blogging my nails really at this point, it was more of a take photos of the nails, share them with ladies on Makeup Alley and Instagram. I really started the nail blogging in February of this year. At this point last year, I was just starting to get into indie polishes. I had my first KBShimmers, as you can see above, and was dabbling with some light nail art techniques. The lights I did were courtesy of some gelly roll pens.

And now a recap of all the art I did:

Day 1: Snowflakes


Day 2: Christmas Trees


Day 3: Snowman


Day 4: Santa and Elves


Day 5: Ice Blue and White Colors


Day 6: Any line from the "12 Days" song - Two Turtle Doves


Day 7: Red and Green


Day 8: Christmas decorations


Day 9: Glitter


Day 10: Ugly Sweater Nails


Day 11: Presents


Day 12: Freestyle - Christmas Skittle


Merry Christmas dear readers. I am so thankful you take the time to read my blog and comment from time to time. I cherish you all. Coming up I have a post on some confessions and goals for the new year AND Top polishes and nail art of 2014!!!

A Christmas Skittle

To end this epic challenge, I decided to have a little bit of this and that! A combination of things I hadn't tried yet but were oh-so-holiday-esque!



I used a host of polishes for this challenge. For the Candy Cane nails I used a base of Painted Polish Ho-ho Holo and painted the stripes with Sally Hansen OMGhost.



For the base of the middle three fingers I used Literary Lacquers I Heard the Bells (a polish I got for free for shopping on Black Friday and purchasing a certain amount).



Then I used KBShimmer's holiday nail vinyls, the one of ornaments and trees, and painted a coat of ORLY Candy Cane Lane and OPI Christmas Gone Plaid (which I just won off a giveaway from Danele at Low Country Lacquer), leaving I Heard the Bells in the center making up the trees and ornaments.



For the final nail, I wanted to do a Christmas tree a-la what I have seen some other people do online with the striping tape. And to top the tree I used a glitter piece for KBShimmer Pine-ing for Yule.



Overall I really LOVED this challenge and I am so excited that I participated. I had such a fun time seeing what everyone else did with the prompts, I am truly grateful too because I feel this challenge made me grow in my nail art skills.

I'll do a wrap up of all my art tomorrow, and I'll give a sneak to what I did last year (which REALLY shows how much I've grown, in photography and nail art).

But once more, please don't forget to hop around to the other lovely ladies participating in this challenge!


   

    An InLinkz Link-up
   

Present Christmas Nail Art

Today's post was one I was not excited about because I knew it would take some freehand, and I am just no good at freehand.



The final concept here, which I ended up really liking, was inspired by some Christmas Tree nail art I saw on Instagram using lightening bolt nail vinyls. I then freehanded the bows, which as you can tell aren't the greatest. But this is by far way better than my first attempt at present nails.



The base polish for this manicure is Smitten Polish Nose So Bright, a gorgeously bright pure red holo. This is a very special polish. Though the pigment is strong. I put top coat on the nails with the bows, and as you can tell, the silver polish definitely tinted red because of the top coat.

I purposely did not top coat the green polish (so the red pigment wouldn't mess it up), which is another amazing polish. This is Literary Lacquers A Thousand Christmas Trees, perfect for the Christmas Tree manicure! I also used this polish in my Ugly Sweater Nails.



This manicure was very special to me because it includes two of my most favorite indie brands: Literary Lacquers and Smitten Polish. And they are the perfect combination for Christmas!

Anyway, before I came up with the idea for this manicure, I did attempt to freehand bows on gorgeous glitter polish. The polish I used was Ellagee Ev'rybody Wishes for Silver and Gold, a gorgeous glitter polish I was saving specifically for the holiday season.



Not only did I ruin the glitter polish, the freehanded bows were a disaster. It looked so much better in my head. But I had to show it for you, because it shows that not every attempt is an A+. But better to try and fail, it will just make me better for next time!

Now don't forget to check out the other ladies who are participating in the 12 Days of Christmas Nail Art Challenge, below! Only one manicure left, I'm so excited to put that one together too! :-)


   

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Ugly Sweater Nails

Well my Ugly Sweater Nails turned out to me more pretty holiday sweater nails, I really really love these nails guys!



I started with three thin coats of Literary Lacquers A Thousand Christmas Trees. Truly love this evergreen holo! It is a linear holo with microglitter holo scattered throughout. Literary Lacquers has become one of my favorite brands this year!



Please excuse the chip in the above photo. I've been experimenting with base coats, and I haven't found a good one yet. Obviously.

Anyway, the next step was to stamp the sweater design. I used Winstonia W120 plate for this design. It was tough, I had to restart a few times, because stamping a design that has lines, means you have to get it straight, and that is a feat! What I felt the whole design was lacking though, was a reindeer. So I broke out my Bundle Monster BM-H01 and stamped this reindeer.



Then I felt it was too blah, needed something more. So I added the red dots to create a more interesting look.



So what do you think!?!? I think this might actually be a favorite of mine. I'm so upset it chipped because that meant I didn't wear it long, but I could definitely try recreating this in the future. So pretty!

Don't forget to check out the other ladies in the challenge below! Only two manis left and I will have made it through my first challenge ever! So excited I stuck to it all!


   

    An InLinkz Link-up

   

Christmas Sparkle Bomb

Today's challenge for the 12 Days of Christmas Nail Art Challenge was sparkle. This one was a tough one for me because I have a lot of gorgeous sparkle nail polish, it was hard to pick.



The final product is a good mix of gold, red and green, with tiny white glitter throughout.



I started the manicure with three thin coats of Painted Polish High Off Holo. It is a gold holographic microglitter. On it's own it was quite beautiful.



Then to give it that special Christmas glitter mix to it, I added 1 coat of Model City Polish Christmas With A Chance of Snow. I have never tried Model City Polish before and I have to say I was quite impressed with this polish. I received it in Santa's Secret Sack Indie Polish Box I purchased in early November but just got in the mail this week!

Christmas with a Chance of Snow is a glitter topper (or it's beautiful on it's own as well) that includes green and red medium holographic glitter pieces with mini white microglitters scattered throughout. The polish is so pretty and perfect for the season. The polish was extremely easy to work with, no glitter dragging and it was densely packed in the bottle, so there was no fishing or dabbing needed for application. It retails for $8.50. I was definitely impressed with my first Model City Polish.

Anyway, can't wait to see what everyone else chose for this challenge. Check out the other ladies, at the Inlinkz below!


   

    An InLinkz Link-up

   

Christmas Decoration Nail Art

Today's prompt was Christmas decorations. Went pretty lazy with this prompt, but the reason was I really wanted to try out Smitten Figgy Pudding.



This manicure started with two coats of Smitten Figgy Pudding, a lovely purple jelly with gorgeous golden-y bronze flakies.



This polish was somewhat of a beast to photograph. At some points it looked blurple, other it was a more pinkish purple. To fufill the prompt, I stamped the ornaments and wreath using Bundle Monster BM-H03.



Once again, this polish had a strong pigment. The stamping polish I used was white. But I acutally like what it did to it, made it more subtle. Overall, I really liked this manicure. It was simple, the polish really stood out, and it was an understated holiday manicure.

Don't forget to check out the other ladies from the 12 Days of Christmas Nail Art challenge!


   

    An InLinkz Link-up

   

Red and Green Sparkle Chevrons

Today's challenge in the 12 Days of Christmas Art is a classic holiday theme: Red and Green.

I was so excited for this prompt, I had just the idea, and then that idea failed. But more on that later. My motto, if at first you don't succeed, try try again. And so I did.



Remember the star of my last manicure (Two Turtle Doves), well after I finished taking photos of that manicure, I finished it off by doing this manicure!



You'll have to excuse my photography skills with this manicure, the sparkle makes my camera go a bit mad. The manicure started out with two coats of Painted Polish Between the Pines on all nails except my ring finger (where the gold was in the last manicure), on that nail I did two coats of China Glaze Ruby Pumps. Then I added the single chevrons and two coats of the opposite polish on each nail.



The chevron placement wasn't perfect, but I do like the results. As I said earlier, this manicure was inspired by a manicure fail I had earlier in the season. Apparently some red pigment is a little difficult.



This is Smitten Polish Nose So Bright, and it is an AMAZING pure red holo. I think it just needs to speak for itself. Instead I combined it with Literary Lacquers A Thousand Christmas Trees. Yes that was meant to be green, see what the red pigment did to it? So much fail, so much sadness. Anyway, lesson learned, at least the second attempt didn't have that same problem!

Have any of you ever had mishaps with a red pigment?!

Don't forget to visit the other ladies doing this challenge, I can't wait to see what everyone has done with this prompt!


   

    An InLinkz Link-up