Starry Mint

A little bit of a palate-cleanser after all the glitter and bling...

Two coats of Sinful Colors Mint Apple, and stars stamped with a dark blue Color Club jelly polish and BM14

Christmas Day Mani

This year my special holiday polish was Sally Hansen Midnight Glitz. OMG such a fun glitter! But, unlike past holiday polishes, this one just couldn't be used on its own due to not being full-coverage.

And since none of my earlier festive nails this year incorporated both red and green polishes, and I was feeling moderately lazy but immensely festive... this is what I came up with. 

Nothing too fancy in the execution, just alternating colors and glitter with matte top coat. 

Originally I was planning to go shiny, but I used matte polishes for my bases -- Revlon Fire Fox and Emerald City, specifically -- and before putting on the glitter I took a good look at 'em and got bitten hard by the matte bug. So I finished off with Hard Candy's matte topcoat instead of my usual shiny one. 

Unfortunately though, mattifying dulled the holo glam of the smaller gold glitters. Still, a great Christmas mani which I got lots of compliments on.

Christmas Nails!

...ooops. Guess who slacked off drastically on posting her recent manis? Yep, that would be me! 

So I've got a few to catch up with...

This one was pretty simple. Just a sponged gradient of Sinful Colors Call You Later over Sinful Colors Tokyo Pearl (very frosty, I did two coats and then sponged on a third for a less brushstrokey finish).

Time for a glitter party! I started with two coats of NOPI Best Pink Ever (I have the same settling problem with my bottle as a lot of people, I had to shake it up very well before use) and then one coat of China Glaze Glitter All The Way, which applied like butter. No fuss!

Going for a wintery, frosty effect and something vaguely resembling a pine tree... I did a base of three coats of Sinful Colors Cinderella, and dotted with an unknown grey Color Club with a light silver shimmer.

(sorry for the cat hair, the stuff gets *everywhere*)

I used a forest-green Color Club (name unknown) for the base on this one, followed by one dabbled coat of Wet & Wild Mountain High. The glitters in Mountain High are fun, but the consistency is terrible. It was incredibly difficult to get even glitter coverage, and there was the added difficulty of keeping the milky base even. Do not recommend unless you're prepared to baby it A LOT.

Finished off the look with a cute Santa decal and a gold star from some loose glitter I've got left over from a craft project.

I'll have one more for ya coming up soon, it's too dark now for pictures unfortunately. My actual Christmas-day mani!

Timeless Sequins

I'm starting to get into the holiday groove, but not quite ready for a full-on CHRISTMAS IN YOUR FACE mani (I'll get there!) So I decided on something that could go festive, but wouldn't go amiss anytime.

I started with two coats of Covergirl Timeless Rubies, a glorious soft red glassfleck, and sponged on a gradient with L'Oreal Sexy in Sequins. Oh how I love such glitter-heavy pretties!

Accent Bling

Feeling crummy after getting orthodontic work done, I figured I'd break out some holo and glitter to cheer myself up a little.

Wasn't really feeling like doing too much fancy, so I stuck with a simple two-polish accent nail mani. But then, I did pick fancy-on-their-own polishes... 

For the main color I used Color Club Kismet, which is a slightly yellow-green tinted holo. For the accent I used Maybelline Silver Swank, which in direct light has a yellow-gold glow. 

I was a bit wary of using two blingy polishes at once, I wasn't sure the competing AWESOME would work out so well. But it turned out quite nice I think!

Moon Strobe

I've been on a french-tip kick lately. 

Here I started with two coats of Sally Hansen Moonstone, freehanded the tips with the bottle brush of Maybelline Cool Couture (which has a nice hidden purple shimmer that really doesn't show after glitterfying), dotted along the line with Sinful Colors Lavender, then decided it needed more bling and finished up by adding another freehanded layer to the tip with Sally Hansen Strobe Light.

Cranberry Leaves

This is not a Christmas mani. This is a Thanksgiving mani! I have personal rules about respecting holidays by not OD-ing on them before the prior holiday's even happened yet.

So here we go, inspired by cranberry sauce (om nom nom)!

I started with two coats of BB Paris Scarlet (could have done with three, but didn't realize quite how much VNL I had going on til after taking the pictures, oops!) then stamped some fancy leaf accents with Pure Ice Twinkle and the BM01 plate.