Merry Christmas!

I hope you are enjoying your Tuesday! And that you had a Merry Christmas, if you celebrate. Otherwise, Happy Tuesday! I wanted to do nail art for Christmas, but I have been utterly exhausted lately, so I settled for Christmas colored polishes.

Ignore the tip wear and band-aid. I usually take photos within an hour or so of doing my nails. However, I did not remember I needed pictures until the next day after work. By then, I had tip wear and a bandage from a cash register related injury.

For my green, I used Barielle Date Night, a jewel toned emerald shimmer. My accent nail consisted of Essie Head Mistress and As Gold As It Gets. I love this combination! So simple, yet very appropriate for the holiday.

Christmas Stamping

I hope you are enjoying your Sunday! Christmas is getting closer and closer. And the stress is getting worse and worse. But at least my nails are cute. :)

I used only three polishes for my base and stamping. Ulta The Jungle Look (green), Color Club Gingerbread Man (gold), and Love My Nails New Love (red). For my stamped images, I used BM-316 (gift with bow), BM-320 (ornament), BM-321 (tree), and BM14 (bells).

Christmas Tree

I hope you are enjoying your Saturday! Its been a little over a week since I last posted, and I apologize for that. The holiday season has me stressed out. Getting ready for the holiday itself, plus work. I work in retail and I am sure you have seen how the stores are this time of year. I have never little time left. So I am cramming a post in before I go to bed tonight.

You have probably seen this type of design floating around the web lately. It has been very popular this season. I used one coat of Milani Signature Gold as my base. I love this gold, and keep picking it up as the gold in my holiday designs. For the tree, I taped off my nail leaving a triangle. Then I placed striping tape, making sure to lap it over the tape. I painted on a layer of Color Club Holiday Splendor before carefully peeling the tape off. Finally, I topped my tree with a silver star glitter.

The design is very easy to create. I need to work with striping tape more.

Color Club Gingerbread Man & Holly

I hope you are enjoying your Thursday! I recently got a new camera. I have been playing around with it and trying to see if it is what I want. Obviously, macro shots (close up photography) is a large part of my camera use. I have not perfected taking manicure shots with this camera yet, but decided I needed to start posting them. If anything, seeing them on my blog will hopefully help me figure out tricks to make the pictures better. I purchased a Fujifilm FinePix HS30EXR. The camera is amazing. I am just having trouble getting macro shots in my light box without casting a shadow with the long lens. Also, getting my skin to turn out the right color. If you have any advice, please let me know, whether by comment or email.

Enough of my camera rambling, onto the pictures!

Color Club Gingerbread Man is a light gold foil. The application is perfection and opaque in one coat. It may appear like your basic gold foil, but it does have something special about it. Its scented! It smells like a frosted gingerbread cookie. The scent is very light. Nothing overpowering.

I wanted to make this manicure into something even more Christmas like than gingerbread, so added hollies. Three berries and three leaves. I used stamping plate BM14 and Ulta The Jungle Look. I attempted to stamp red and green on my thumb, but the delicate design dried too much before I could stamp it. So I decided to do green and add the red afterward. I went back with a small dotting tool and Love My Nails New Love to make the holly berries red. I personally love this. Its simple and very easy.

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer

I hope you are enjoying your Monday! Today I have my first Christmas design of the season to share with you.

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, along with all of the other reindeer! I wish I had done better on getting the shapes even. It was part my hand shaking and part the fan going making the polish too tacky. For my little reindeer I used, China Glaze Mahogany Magic (brown base), Pure Ice Super Star! (white), Sinful Colors Black on Black, Essence Once Upon a Time (red), and Julep Olivia (tan antlers). I took inspiration from Top Coat It.

Santa Christmas Nails

Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone who celebrates had a wonderful Christmas! My day as been entertaining. But what day with family isn't entertaining? :) For the holiday, I did a Christmas themed design. I could not decide on just one, so I did three. Each hand looks the same.

Each nail has a different design or polish. On my pinky, I used one coat of Essence Once Upon a Time from their Fairytale Collection. For my index finger, I did part of Santa's suit. A base coat of Wet n Wild Red Red then white stripes with acrylic paint (it goes on more opaque in one stroke) and a black belt in Sinful Colors Black on Black. For the buckle, I used Funky Fingers Golden Coast. On my middle finger, I used two coats of Sinful Colors San Francisco then one coat of the green Hard Candy mini from their Limited Edition Holiday 2011 Collection. For my index finger, I did a Santa hat. I followed a tutorial from CutePolish. I used white acrylic paint and Wet n Wild Red Red. Finally for my thumb, I did a little Santa. I saw this cutie on KK Nails and followed the tutorial from Mini Nail Blog. For Santa, I used Wet n Wild Red Red, Sinful Colors Black on Black, Sinful Colors Snow Me White, and white acrylic paint.

I have used all of these polishes before except for the Hard Candy mini and Wet n Wild Red Red. The HC mini was a little thick, but manageable. Red Red was a dream. Such a pretty red. I cannot wait to use this beauty for a full mani.

Color Club Holiday Splendor & Finger Paints Red Crackle

Its almost Christmas! I will have a cute Christmas nail art mani to show you all tomorrow. :) For today, I have a simple red and green combination.

This is not my first attempt at layering a red crackle over Color Club Holiday Splendor. However, the last one was a bit of a failure. I think this one went somewhat better. I painted all of my nails with one coat of Holiday Splendor. I love how opaque and easy to apply this polish is! Then I layered Finger Paints Red Crackle over the index finger and thumb on my left hand and my pointer and pinky on my right hand. I wish it had showed up more red, but it does look so much better than the last crackle. I already want to layer it over pink for Valentine's Day. Also, it cracks really well. Love it!

Orly Meet Me Under the Mistletoe

Two days until Christmas! I know this polish is from last year's holiday collection, but I just picked it up at Sally's recently. The micro glitter is amazing!

My nails did not magically grow, this polish is from a week ago. :) This is two coats of Meet Me Under the Mistletoe. I was actually surprised that it covered so well. The application was very nice. Please ignore the leftover remnants even after cleanup. Dark polishes never clean up well for me.

My Secret Santa Gift

This year for Christmas, several members on Polish-aholics Anonymous took part in a Secret Santa gift exchange organized by the groups Admin, Krissi. She went above and beyond organizing it! I sent an international package to Kerrie in the UK (she's already gotten it, yay). Closer to the beginning of December, I received my Secret Santa gift all the way from Romania from Theodora. I was so excited! I love getting stuff in the mail anyway, but receiving a Christmas gift with surprises inside from Romania got me super excited. I was literally bouncing! :)

Everything except for the candy was wrapped up. Which I love. I got to concentrate on opening each thing.

Here is everything completely unwrapped. I got Nivea pomegranate lip balm, some yummy looking candies, Tenet Nail Decorations, a face mask, a beautiful bracelet that she made herself (I love love love it), and of course polishes.

From left to right: Essence Magic Wand!, Flormar U07, U18, U25, and an Alix Avien (they don't have names). I absolutely love Essence polishes and was beyond thrilled to receive a magnetic one. Before this, I did not own any. I had never heard of Flormar or Alix Avien, but they are gorgeous. 

Last but not least, I took some up close bottle shots today, so you can get a better idea of what each polish looks like.

Candy Cane Nails

Its been a few days since I posted a manicure. Life has been hectic with Christmas, among other things. My little brother is going off to bootcamp next week. We did Christmas for him over the weekend since he'll be gone. I'll show you all the mani I did for our early Christmas later on this week.

Today I have a candy cane design to share! I've been wanting to do candy canes because of my love of peppermint. And this week's challenge on PAA was Stripes/Rainbow (the vote tied).

Each hand ended up looking different. I stamped my left hand and was unhappy with the design, so I tried to freehand the stripes on my right hand. I actually like my right hand better for once, with the exception of my index finger.

Right Hand

Left Hand

I definitely want to do this mani again this month. I'll remember to freehand it all. The base coat of white is Sinful Colors Snow Me White with red stripes of Love My Nails New Love. I also added one coat of Ulta Glitter Top Coat to give them a little sparkle.

It should annoy me more that my hands are different styles of stripes, but where I work, no one pays much attention to my nails. And I put too much effort into it to remove it just yet.

I hope everyone is having a wonderful start to their week! :)

Untrieds Day 27 - Sally Hansen Cherry Bomb

More Christmas is coming your way with green and red. :) The idea was to layer red crackle over my existing mani of Color Club Holiday Splendor.

Cherry Bomb has the consistency of a jelly, so it did not hold its color over another color. Which is disappointing, especially since a crackle is meant to wear over other polishes. I really wish this polish was more of a creme and held its color.

Please check out the other lovely bloggers participating in this challenge. :)

Alexandria at Je T'aime Lacquer

Alyssa at Always Polished

Amber at The Polished Momma

Andrea at Addicted to the Allure of Beauty

Caitlin at Something Creative

Carly at Lacquered Lover

Caroline at Good Lack, Nail!

Caroline at Shadow's Nail Art

Chelsea at Pretty and Polished

Ingie at Limited Addiction Nails

Jacki at Adventures in Acetone

Jamie at Nails Adored

Lindsey at Nailtopia

Nory at Fierce Makeup and Nails

Rachel at Cherry Glam Girl

Sarah at Lucky Lacquers

Shaina at Haute Lacquer

Taylor at Nailed to the T

Thalie at Glazed Talons

Untrieds Day 26 - Color Club Holiday Splendor

This is my first Christmas polish of the season! :)

Oh my goodness, I love this polish! I am not usually a big fan of green, but this one is wonderful. A very pigmented green base with tons of green and holo glitter. The application was the best of all the Color Club glitter polishes (and Funky Fingers, considering they are same formula) that I have tried. This is just one coat. The others I have tried needed at least three coats to be opaque.

Please check out the other lovely bloggers participating in this challenge. :)

Alexandria at Je T'aime Lacquer

Alyssa at Always Polished

Amber at The Polished Momma

Andrea at Addicted to the Allure of Beauty

Caitlin at Something Creative

Carly at Lacquered Lover

Caroline at Good Lack, Nail!

Caroline at Shadow's Nail Art

Chelsea at Pretty and Polished

Ingie at Limited Addiction Nails

Jacki at Adventures in Acetone

Jamie at Nails Adored

Lindsey at Nailtopia

Nory at Fierce Makeup and Nails

Rachel at Cherry Glam Girl

Sarah at Lucky Lacquers

Shaina at Haute Lacquer

Taylor at Nailed to the T

Thalie at Glazed Talons