December - Christmas Fun and Sparkle

December of course meant that it was time for Christmas nails and what says Christmas more than cute characters and glitter?

It's always difficult to decide which Christmas style to start with, and normally for me it would be snowflakes, as I do snowflake nails each year, but I saw lots of them popping up all over Instgram, so thought I'd save them for later and go for a cute snowman design first.

Back in September I had thought of a snow scene design using China Glaze Chillin' With My Snowmies, so I incorporated this in with the snowman.  I started with a base of Barry M Blueberry Ice Cream for a chilly feel and added a coat of the China Glaze topper on all my nails, expect my middle finger.

I then used White Knight from MoYou London to paint a small circle for the snowman's head.  I then used Barry Mushroom, and Graffiti Nails Tuscany for the details.

A couple of years ago I did a dotticure Christmas tree design which I absolutely loved, so I thought I' recreated it, but in non traditional Christmas colours.  I used Models Own Snow White as a base and then used, Kiko 277, Barry M Sparkling Amethyst, China Glaze Frostbite, and OPI Turn on the Haute Light for all the fun dots.  Dotticures are one of my favourite nail designs to do, so it's always lots of fun to add them to a Christmas design.

As I mentioned before each Christmas I do a snowflake design, and inspired by my 'non traditional' colours in my previous design, I decided to use Sparkling Ruby from Barry M for some dramatic snowflakes.  For the base of the snowflake nails I used Happy Anniversary by OPI which came in my November Nail Box.

 

To finish off the year, I went for something simple, but gorgeous.  Thunder and Lightning from Models Own is just the perfect choice for new year's, the holographic glitter looks just like all the fireworks set off to celebrate.  It is a little thin on application, so you need at least three coats, but that's a small price to pay for the amazing glitter.

What was your favourite design this month?

Thanks for stopping by

Aimée x

Christmas Tree Nails with Born Pretty Store Nail Stud Review*

Hello all,

It's nearly here, only three more sleeps!  With that in mind, it seemed like a really good time to do some more Christmas nails.  I decided to go with cute and colourful Christmas trees featuring gold and neon nail studs from Born Pretty Store.

*Press sample - sent to me for review

What I got for Christmas - Loads of Nail Goodies!

Hello all and Happy New Year,

I always love seeing haul / stash posts and having a good old nosey at what people have, so I thought I would share all the nail goodies I got for Christmas with you...

I was a very lucky girl and got 21 new polishes and lots of other bits as you can see.  This is quite a picture heavy post, but I wanted to show things in more details so keep on scrolling if you want to have a closer look!

Lets dive in shall we...

Christmas Tree Dotticure Nail Art

Hello all,

I have my last Christmas nail art of the season and more importantly it will be what I have on my nails on the big day!

This was a 'pinspired' design this week.  This year I have seen lots of Christmas trees done with striping tape, so I was looking for something different and came across this pin.  I loved it so much that I just had to have a go.  Clicking through and reading the blog post about this I found out that it was inspired by another blogger as well, so it's really going around now!

I started off with two coats of Snow White from Models Own.  This is a fab white polish.  A bit streaky of first coat, but perfect in two.  I then used Barry M Red Glitter, China Glaze Emerald Sparkle and Models Own Bora Bora to create my dots.  Using different the two different end of my dotting tool for the large and medium dots and then end of a cuticle stick for the tiny dots.  I repeated this pattern on all my nails, but left my ring finger free for my Christmas tree.  For the tree I started by dotting Emerald Sparkle in a single dot in the centre of my nail just below the cuticle.  Then two dots at the tip of my nail to create a triangle pattern.  I then filled in the rest of the tree with some extra green dots.  I then added three Red Glitter dots for baubles and three Bora Bora dots for tinsel.  The star had to be something a bit special so I added a yellow gem to sparkle away at the top of the tree.  Then came the tricky part... Top coating without causing drag on the dots over the white! And look... It worked!!!!!!! Yay!!

I love how festive this manicure is and what was even better was that it was so simple!  I also did some nail art for my mum and sister as well...

A fancy swirly tree for my mum and snowflake for my sister.

I hope you all like my Christmas tree dotticure and have a very Merry Christmas x

Snowflake Nail Art

Hello all,

I have done my first festive nails! Yay!  I love doing these snowflakes and this has become a sort of tradition now as I have done a variation of this design for the last few years.

I think these are the best ones I have done so far as I love the extra layer of sparkle I added.  I think this gives this design something a bit extra!  I started with two coats of Models Own Top Turquoise, then used a coat of NYC New York Colour in Lights-Camera-Glitter.  Then it was on to the snowflakes.  I used Models Own Snow White for these.  I used a striper brush from another polish for the star like bits of the snowflakes and then my dotting tool for the ends.

It's a really simple design which is why I like doing it.  The picture unfortunately does not do this glitter justice as you can't really see all the particles.  There are small bits of silver glitter and large glitter particles in blue and pink.  I think it really adds to the design making it look really frosty and wintry.  Hmmmm... now I've just got to decide what to do next!

Happy New Year

Hello all,

I hope eveyone had a brilliant Christmas and new year.  I was very lucky and got some lovely new nail polishes, gems and nail tapes for Christmas.

Look at all those goodies!! I hope to be able to do lots of new nail art designs with it all and look forward to sharing them with you.

I have a few ideas in mind already! Like my Facebook page and comment with design requests.

Christmas Nail Art

Happy Christmas everyone!

I couldn't decided what design to do for the big day itself so I did a bit of everything!

As you can see I have a penguin, Santa Claus' suit, a Christmas tree, a snowman and a snowflake.

All of these are very easy to do -

Penguin

• Paint your nail black
• When this has dried paint a white circle at the tip of your nail
• Add two small dots for eyes
• Wait for this to dry, then add two smaller dots of black to complete the eyes
• Then using an orange polish add a little triangle under the eyes and on the very tip of the white circle - these will be the penguins beak and flippers

Candy Cane Inspired Nail Art

I have been working my way through some Christmas designs and have been really pleased with the results so far!

I think this week's are my favourite that I have done though.  I was thinking of Christmas things that could inspire my nail art and I decided that candy canes would look fab.  Rather than go for red and white stripes I wanted to take a different approach.

 

 

This design was very easy to create, but very messy with watermarbling!  I painted three of my nails in Bright Red by Barry M and added my Collection 2000 sparkle top coat.  I love the top coat because the glitter is so fine but so pretty.

 

I painted my ring finger and thumb with a base of  white polish, I used Sally Hansen.  Leave this to dry and then comes the messy part.  To do water marbling you need a cup of room temperature water and your polishes.  New polishes work best.  You can use as many colours as you like, but you need to work quite quickly.  Drip your first polish on the surface of the water, I let a few drips fall to make sure I had enough.  The polish will start to spread out on the surface of the water.  Then add some drips of your other colour.  Then taking a tooth pick draw some swirls or stripes into the polish on the surface of the water.  When you are ready bend your finger placing the nail directly down onto your swirled polish, then straighten your finger straight down into the water.  You will see that there is polish still on the surface of the water.  Before removing your finger you need to get rid of the polish from the surface otherwise you will ruin your design.  Blow gently on the polish on the polish on the water, then using your tooth pick swirl it around on the surface and the polish will start to stick to the tooth pick.  Once the polish has gone from the surface of the water you can carefully remove your finger from the water.  You will have a lot of polish all around your nail and on your finger, which can look a bit scary, but all it takes is a cotton bud dipped into nail polish remover to take it off.  To help with this you can also use Vaseline around your nail and on your finger to stop the polish sticking so much.

 

Repeat those same steps for each watermarbled nail and voila - you have candy cane inspired nails!  I finished these nails off, once they were dry and cleaned up, with a coat of the sparkle top coat.  What's great about watermarbling is that no two nails look the same so you never really know what you might get.

 

I hope you like them and maybe try out watermarbling yourself.  If you get stuck there are loads of videos on YouTube that will help you out.

Christmas Plaits Nail Art

My nails have got more Christmassy this week with some festive Christmas plaits.  I first saw these plaits (or fish tail) nails a while ago now and tired them when I first saw them as the effect was something quite different from things that I had seen before.  But now getting round to Christmas designs I thought I would give them another go in festive colours.

I decided that I wanted to create the plait design on my thumb nail and ring finger,so I painted the other three fingers with silver from Models Own.  I had already picked white, red and green to be the colours for the plaited nails.  To start off the plaits I painted the nails on each hand with white and left this to dry.  Taking my next colour I then painted a diagonal stripe.  I again left this to dry.  Taking my third colour I made a diagonal stripe in the other direction.  Leaving each stripe to dry in between I then just continued down my nail alternating my three different colours until I reached the tip of my nail.

This can take a while, but I think the effect is worth it in the end.

I hope you like this festive design and maybe have a go yourself!

Icy Blue Snowflake Nail Art

It's that time of year again.  I am feeling Christmasy as the decorations have gone up today - YAY! My nails over the next few weeks will also be festive for the season.  I hope you enjoy.

This week as it has been rather frosty and cold I thought I would go with a design that matched the weather.  I went with snowflakes on an icy blue background.

The base colour for this design is a gorgeous duck egg colour from Marks and Spencer with Collection 2000 sparkly top coat over the top.  This gives a beautiful base for the design as it looks like a snowy scene.  To create the snowflakes I used a dotting tool to make three small lines on each nail in the shape of a star.  I then added a dot of polish to the end of each of the lines to make it look like a snowflake.  Adding in extra dots makes it look like there is falling snow around each of the snowflakes.

This is a really cute and easy design to try.  If you don't have a dotting tool you can use a toothpick to get the same effect.

Check back soon for more Christmas designs - I am already planning some others!