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

Christmas Present Nail Art

Hello all,

Continuing the Christmas theme I have cute present nails this week.  And what could possibly make a present better? That's right, glitter!

I used Models Own Sardonyx from the Velvet Goth collection for my base colour.  You need two coats of this as it's a little streaky first of all.  It dries with a matte finish which means that it dries really quickly which worked out well for me as it meant that when I came to doing the bows my base was nice a dry.  I always make a mess when I used red polishes for some reason and this was no exception, clean up was a little tricky as it's glitter, but it worked out ok in the end.

To create the bows and ribbons for my presents I used the Models Own WAH Nail nail art pen in gold.  This was perfect for it as you have the striper brush when you twist the lid, but then you have the pen if you pull the lid off.  I started with two lines creating an offset cross on each finger and then used the pen end to draw two loops and tassels of the bow.

I topped this off with Sally Hansen Ista-Dri top coat to add a nice shine.  I really love how this turned out and it reminds me of Cartier in New York at Christmas...

Here's a picture I took whilst I was there in December 2006

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!