Nail Art: Winter Themed Snowflake Nails!

Hey y'all! Today on the blog I am sharing some wintery themed nail art with you. I thought it would be nice to take a break from Christmas specific nail art for a bit. I love LOVE snowflakes. I love using them in nail art and hanging them on my tree at Christmas time. I live in Georgia so we rarely see snow. As such, I have a weird fascination with it that my friends in colder climates just don't understand! Anyway, I have two snowy manis to show you today, let's jump right in!

Let's start with one of my favorite and most sparkly manis of all time! I used three polishes from the M Polish Winter 2015 collection to make a gradient on my nail. I started with my favorite base coat - LynBDesigns B-Stronger. Once that was dry, I used a latex free makeup wedge that I cut in half to make it more the size of my nail. I placed Frost first, followed by Bells, and finally Carol so that my colors were lightest to darkest starting at my cuticle. Now if you've ever done gradient nail art before, you know that it usually take several passes with the sponge to get the blended look that you're going for. With these polishes...ONE FREAKING PASS! I did bounce the sponge up and down a few times but I never reloaded my sponge. This is one coat with the makeup wedge! I added a quick dry topcoat  - mine is KBShimmer Clearly On Top to protect my base from smudging when it came time to stamp.

Once my base was dry, I used my Creative Shop Stamper and scraper along with M Polish Figgy to stamp an image from a Cici&Sisi plate for the snowflake image. I sealed everything in with another round up topcoat and that's it! Let me show you the macro:

The other mani I have to show you is a little less glitzy, but only just. Its also a bit more abstract and less traditional snowflake. That's because the images I used are from Bundle Monster's most recent holiday set and the plate with the large snowflake images are too big for my tiny baby nails right now. Oh well! Onward and upward, I say! I stamped an image from BM-S213 using M Polish Copper over 2 coats of Powder Perfect Deshret. I'm not sure if this Powder Perfect is still available but if you can get your hands on it - DO IT! Its a garnet textured polish with scattered holo glitters in it and such a gorgeous base for winter manis! Garnet happens to be my birthstone so I think that's why I'm drawn to it. Since its textured, I did topcoat with one coat before stamping so that my stamping wouldn't look textured. I also topcoated the whole mani again after the stamping so in the end, my base didn't feel or look textured anymore. Check out the macro!

That's all I have to share with you today! Which mani was your favorite? What's your favorite winter design? 

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Nail Art: Poinsettia

Hey y'all! Today on the blog I have another Christmas themed mani to share with you. I drew my inspiration from the Christmas poinsettia centerpiece I have on my dining room table right now - its a mix of beautiful glitter red and gold poinsettia flowers in a somewhat rustic kind of basket so I just went from there. Searching through my plates left me a little disappointed in my choices for poinsettias but luckily I did find one on one of my UberChic Beauty plates! I have some more pictures to share with you and a list of steps to complete this mani. Let me show you! 

I started with two polishes for my base - Lorelei Lacquer Love Always for my red and M Polish Bells for my Gold. I did 2 coats of Love Always on my index and pinkie fingers and one coat of Bells on my middle two. I allowed those to dry and topcoated with KBShimmer Clearly On Top and waited until they had completely dried. While my base colors dried, I used M Polish Cayuga to stamp the outline of the flower from UberChic Beauty 3-02. I filled in the petals with Love Always and the center with Zoya Verushka. I let that dry on the stamper and topcoated it with KBShimmer Clearly On Top and let it sit until it was dry. Cue me checking Facebook and Instagram to kill time for about 7-8 minutes so I didn't rip my decals. :P 

Once my decals were ready to be pulled off the stamper, I added another heavy coat of topcoat to my nail, practically flooding my cuticles and gently laid the decal on top. I gingerly pressed it down so I didn't tear or smear my decal. I topcoated one more time to help the decal blend in with my base so it looked seamless. I learned this technique from @karma.and.polish on Instagram. Her stamping decals are always perfection! 

I also stamped another image from the same UberChic Beauty plate over Love Always on my index and pinkie finger to add a little dimension and to mimic the basket of my centerpiece. It didn't show as well as I would've liked, because holo on holo! Let me show you how my decal looked on my Creative Shop Stamper:

That's it for this nail art post. What do you think of this mani? What are your favorite Christmas colors?

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Nail Art: Textured Peppermint Winter Nails!

Hey y'all! Today on the blog I have some wintery/Christmassy nail art to share with you! I was really in the mood to use some textured polishes but I wasn't sure which colors or art to do with them. I am actually a huge fan of textured polishes and the PixieDust line is what got me started on Zoya polishes. My first textured polish was Zoya Tomoko and I haven't looked back since! I also really love the OPI Liquid Sands so I pulled out OPI Solitaire and Zoya Oswin for this peppermint/candy cane look. I have some more pictures to share with you and a short step by step on how I completed this mani! 

I started by applying my favorite base coat to protect my natural nails - I use LynBDesigns B-Stronger. Once that was dry, I painted two coats of OPI Solitaire on my thumb, ring finger, and pinkie. I went back with Zoya Oswin after my base color had dried and added the two tiny dots with my smallest dotting tool. I did topcoat with LynBDesigns B-Shiny but only one coat to preserve the texture of the polishes. I mostly added the topcoat to prolong wear. Starting on my middle finger, I used a thin striping brush to add OPI Solitare closest to my cuticle and at an angle. I cleaned off my striping brush and did the same thing with Zoya Oswin. I repeated back and forth, cleaning my brush between each color until I reached the tip of my nail. Once the lines were dry, I went back with the same striping brush and cleaned up my lines a little and intensified each of the colors. I allowed my design to dry and topcoated, again only using one layer of topcoat to preserve the texture of the polishes. And that's it! Super easy and very few tools required for this look. 

Macro of my middle finger 

Macro showing the designs on my middle finger and ring finger

That's it for this nail art look, what do you think? What's your favorite winter/Christmassy design to do?

Thanks for reading!

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