Christmas freestyle

I had some difficulty coming up with a concept for this. I had sketched out some idea that I really didn't like. My eyes were wandering around the apartment trying to think of something when I landed on the DVD of my mom's favourite Christmas classic movie, The Year without a Santa Claus. She loves it! I really only like one song from it, which is the one between the Heat Miser and Snow Miser. I decided that paying homage to that song would be perfect!

I had one hand hot and one hand cold. My left was hot since the hot water is always turning the faucet to the left.

I started my left hand with a fire gradient. I painted the nails with white and did a gradient of yellow, orange, and red. The middle finger was his face, so I started with a neutral on that nail. The colours from before are added for the hair. My index finger is the hat that his minions wear during the song. My ring finger is a thermometer exploding stating that it's 101. And the sun on my pinkie should be obvious.

Snow Miser started out with a gradient between white, light blue, and blue. His face was the light blue. I  included his hat on my index finger and the -10 thermometer on my ring finger. It also says -10, but the angle makes it harder to see.

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Christmas Presents

The night before I painted these nails I had the great idea to use nail art tape and make it into a bow. I am most definitely being sarcastic when I say great because it was so HARD! But I was rather determined and I ended up making a few bows that I was happy with. I only needed one, though because I decided to have the present be my accent nail. (And I painted my other hand with another theme so I had time to do all the prompts)

I decided to do my other nails with French tips, but instead of white I wanted Christmas colours.

The neutral is Canberra't without You by OPI, the red is Scarlet by Ulta 3, and the green is Envious by Kmart. I also used Snow Me White by Sinful Colors under the red for the present to make the colour more vibrant.

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Christmas sweater

I originally wanted to do a fun ugly Christmas sweater, but then I realised that it would be hard to fit one of those designs on my nails. Instead I went for a more traditional Christmas sweater look. I just adapted a sweater that I thought was festive that I found on google images.

I used Scarlet by Ulta3 and Snow Me White by Sinful Colors. For the red background, I put white down first so that the red would be more vibrant.

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Christmas Glitter

This was a hard one for me to decide what to do. I played around with a few ideas in my head, but I wasn't happy with any of them. Then I just did a google image search for Christmas glitter and got an idea to do a gradient. I have two micro glitters, as glitter polish isn't really my thing. They were perfect holiday colours, though. They are Winter Holly by China Glaze and a silver glitter that came with Pretty in Plum from Nicole by OPI.

I was going to do a gradient, so I started off with painting my nails with Con-fused? by China Glaze magnetix. I used a sponge to make the gradient and it was my first time using a glitter polish on a sponge. The polish absorbs into the sponge, but the glitter doesn't. That means that the glitter covers the nail right away instead of the multiple applications of other nail polishes using a sponge.

Glitter is often hard to photograph because of how the light hits it and sometimes it looks blurry. So to best show them off, I included a few pictures of them.

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Christmas Decorations- The Nativity!

I performed Christmas carols with my Christian a cappella group, Rushing Waters, twice over the weekend. Because we're a Christian group, I wanted a manicure that reflected the true meaning of Christmas. I was happy when I saw that today's prompt was for Christmas decorations because it meant that I had just the thing for my nails this weekend.

Every year, my mom puts up a nativity scene. After her mother died, we were given a beautiful nativity scene that my grandma painted. I didn't have the picture of my mom's nativity scene when I was painting my nails, but I made sure to get it after so that I could include it in my blog.

I realised when I was about to paint them that it wasn't going to be the correct way when I show someone my nails, but that's alright. The lined up correctly when I looked at them!

My left hand was the manger scene. I painted all of my nails first with Radiant Violet by Three Beauties. The star on my thumb is Bananarama by Kmart. Most of Joseph's clothes as well as the manger is made out of A-piers to be Tan by OPI. The details of Joseph's clothes are made out of Tiramisu by Sephora. The hay in the manger is a mix of Bananarama and A-piers to be Tan. Mary's veil is made from No Room for the Blues by OPI and her dress is Shark Attack by Sephora. Their faces/hands are a mix of Coach Ella by Fresh Paint and A-piers to be Tan. Jesus' cloths are made from Lily White by Ulta3 and Blackest Black by Designer Brands. That's also what I used for the sheep and the grey parts are a mixture of it.

The angel is made from A-piers to be Tan for the hair, her wings are Lily White, her skin is Coach Ella, her dress is Summer Rose by BOE, and her halo is Gold Fusion by China Glaze magnetix. She is outlined with Blackest Black. My middle finger is just a path to signify the long journey that they wise men had to take to see Jesus. The wise men's skin are made with Coach Ella. Their crowns are made of Gold Fusion. The colours of their outfits are Con-fused? by China Glaze magnetix, Plugged-in Plum by OPI, and Dangerous by Sephora.

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Red and Green- Candy Canes!

I thought about what I could do for red and green and candy canes immediately came to my mind!

I started off this manicure by painting my nails white. I then used two of my brushes that I've never used before. It was a thicker one for the red and a thinner striping brush for the green. I've always used ones with short bristles or a dotting tool, because I just didn't know how the longer bristles would work. Turns out they look great!

The colours are Lily White by Ulta3, Scarlet by Ulta3, and Envious by Kmart.

I really like this manicure, especially how the stripes line up which wasn't intentional! It's a shame that I need to keep changing them so frequently, but that's what happens when it's the Christmas season and you have so many designs you want to do!

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12 Days of Christmas

While this is a "12 Days of Christmas" theme, most people don't realise that the 12 days of Christmas are actually the twelve following Christmas leading up to the epiphany, which is the day celebrating the arrival of the wise men.

But for this prompt, we were supposed to pick a line from the song and create nail art based off of it. I decided to google some images and found this beautiful drawing of the partridge in a pear tree.

http://www.windstarembroidery.com/Details.cfm?ProdID=4199

I decided that I'd use that as my inspiration and created this nail art.

The background colour is Lily White by Ulta 3. For the branch, I used A-piers to be Tan by OPI. The bird is made from a mix of Tiramisu by Sephora and Coach Ella by Fresh Paint. The wing is A-piers to be Tan and the eye is Coach Ella. The pears are a mix of Envious by Kmart, Lily White, and A-piers to be Tan.

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Ice blue and white

I wanted to do a bit of a gradient for this nail art, but really more of a random sponging. I painted my nails with Bonna Blue by Fresh Paint. I used a make-up sponge with Snow Me White by Sinful Colours. I then added some random dots to represent snow balls.

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It's Santa!

I had the idea to make my nails have Santa on one hand and an elf on the other. I decided to do images for each one, so a hat, their face, shirt, and legs. The thumbs are just solid colours.

The green was Envious by Kmart and the red is Scarlet by Ulta3. For the red that was on top of the green, I had to put down white before the red. The red is a bit translucent. The white is Snow Me White by Sinful Colours. The black is Blackest Black by Designer Brands. The elf belt was made with mixing green and black. The belt buckles and bell on the elf hat are Gold Fusion by China Glaze Magnetix. The elf and Santa skin were painted with Coach Ella by Fresh Paint. The rosy cheeks are Strawberry Sundae from Ulta3. The elf's hair is A-piers to be Tan by OPI and his inner ears and painted with a mix of Coach Ella and Strawberry Sundae.

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Snowmen

It's still a bit funny having snowmen and snow on my nails when it's summer in Australia! Although it's been raining all week so I guess it doesn't feel too summery!

I decided to do a French tip of the snow and a snowman on each nail. I didn't want them to be uniform, so I placed them differently around each nail and added different hats and scarves.

The polishes that I used were Bonna Blue by Fresh Paint, Snow Me White by Sinful Colours, Blackest Black by Designer Brands, A-piers to be Tan by OPI, Tahiti by Ulta3, Scarlet by Ulta 3, and Envious by Kmart.

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Christmas Tree

Through my surfing of nail art on the internet, I found some nail art with strings of Christmas lights. I thought they were beautiful and fun, so I added them with a french twist on my fingers with the actual Christmas tree as an accent nail.

I knew exactly what polish I wanted to do for my Christmas tree. It's one that I think is beautiful, but I haven't had a chance to wear it since last Christmas! It's called Winter Holly by China Glaze. It's a green microglitter with flecks of other Christmas colours of glitter. It's perfect for a tree. I added the two pictures to try and show the dimension to the glitter, but they don't really do it justice.

I painted the tree by doing a tape manicure. I first painted the tree shape with Metallica by Wet n Wild and then I added small tape strips. For the tree, I first painted with a coat of Con-fused? by China Glaze magnetix and then a coat of Winter Holly because that has a clear base and I wanted the tree to be fully coloured.

I used Coach Ella by Fresh Paint for the base colour of my nails and Snow Me White by Sinful Colours for the French tips. The string of lights was Blackest Black by Designer Brands. The lights were Shark Attack by Sephora, Envious by Kmart, Bananarama by Kmart, and Scarlet by Ulta3.

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Snowflakes

The Challenge Your Nail Art group on facebook has a 12 days of Christmas challenge. Instead of following the song, it's 12 prompts, one every other day, until Christmas. The first one was yesterday, but I was having a rough day from lack of sleep, due to road construction at night and neighbours hammering in the morning, so I wasn't able to finish up some nail art. Luckily I live in Australia and so it's still yesterday in America! (Also I'm double dipping this for the NAIL linkup!)

The first prompt was snowflakes. It's pretty funny considering that in Australia it was the first day of summer! But since I'm from Michigan, I do associate snow with Christmas.

I decided that I wanted to do a snowflake as an accent nail and then do something like falling snowflakes as a modified French manicure. It ended up even better than I expected! I was just going to do some random cascading shapes with a sponge. What happened was that I used the corner and it made it look like icicles on my nails! I did the snowflake on my middle finger using a small dotting tool.

The polishes that I used were Radiant Violet from Three Beauties and Snow Me White by Sinful Colors.

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Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is only celebrated in America, but that doesn't mean that I wanted to give up my turkey day when I moved to Australia! Thanksgiving is one of my favourite holidays, so my friends and I still had it. It just had to be on Saturday since we don't get the Thursday off. It helps that another one of my friends is also American.

So of course I had to do my nails to celebrate the occasion! My husband was actually gone in the afternoon when I painted my nails, so I watched Pocahontas to get into the holiday spirit!

I absolutely loved my hand turkey. It was so simple with just a skittle for the main four, but I thought it was hilarious!

I wanted to capture the Native Americans, turkey, and pilgrims on my other hand.

The colours that I used were Bananaram by Kmart, Blackest Black by Designer Brands, Lily White and Scarlet by Ulta 3, Gold Fusion by China Glaze magnetix, Tiramisu by Sephora, Tahiti by Ulta 3, and A-piers to be Tan by OPI.

Dreamcatchers

I keep failing at doing these prompts on time, but oh well. I saw that the decals I got from the Born Pretty Store had feathers on it, I knew that I did want to do this prompt.

When I think of dream catchers, I think of Native Americans and turquoise gems.  I wanted to capture the turquoise in the background colour. I wanted to do a technique that I've seen online that is similar to water marbling. The only difference is that instead of doing a bull's eye and swirling it, you spray stuff on it so that it starts to separate. I tried this, but it failed miserably. Instead I tried to redeem it by using the Saran wrap technique where you paint the accent layers on top and then use the Saran wrap to reveal parts of the underlayer.

I really liked how the turquoise came out, but then I realised that it was going to be hard to find a colour for the dreamcatcher that would be noticeable amongst the speckles.

I decided to do the dreamcatcher with grey polish. I didn't have a grey cream, so I mixed a white with a silver to get a more creamy colour. On my left hand, I added the water decals from Born Pretty. I did the same thing that I did last time where I painted the back of the decals first, but it didn't turn out as well as I hoped. One of the feathers looked good, but the others didn't.

I decided to go with a freehand painting for my right hand. It looked a lot better. I'm not sure how I feel about the dreamcatchers, though. They sort of looked like the spiderwebs that I did for Halloween. That's especially true after they got squished a bit the next day.

The colours used were Metallica by Wet n Wild, an unnamed goldish brown by Chi Chi magnetic, A-piers to be Tan by OPI, Koala Bear-y by OPI, Snow me White by Sinful Colors, Low Tide by Spa Ritual, Coach Ella by Fresh Paint, Plugged-in Plum by OPI, Tiramisu by Sephora, and Blackest Black by Designer Brands.

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Nail party for our Rushing Waters debut!

The Christian a Capella group that I am in, Rushing Waters, had their first performances on Sunday at my church. I decided to use my nail art talent and invited the girls over on Saturday to do their nails. Only three of them were able to make it, but it was great fun!

The first one is a base colour is Sparks Will Fly from China Glaze magnetix and it has cascading dots of Bonna Blue by Fresh Paint and the shiny end from Pinstripe by Revlon.

The second one was music notes. The base colour is No Room for the Blues by OPI and the music notes are Sparks Will Fly from China Glaze magnetix. I included two pictures to get the thumb in.

I had a bit of trouble with this one. Or should I say treble? Haha. The problem was that I tried to do a tape manicure. I do like the idea, though. I had based it off of a paint chip. I'll just have to wait longer before I put on the tape since most of the white polish underneath came off when I pulled the tape off. The polishes that I used were Snow Me White by Sinful Colors, Bonna Blue by Fresh Paint, No Room for the Blues by OPI, Shark Attack by Sephora, and Blackest Black by Designer Brands.

Once they left, I did my own nails. I tried to do a technique that I hadn't done before, which involves squishing dots of nail polish down with Saran wrap. I started out with a base colour of Amazon Amaz-off by OPI.

Next I added dots of a bunch of different blues and greens. I forgot to write them down, but I believe it was Low Tide by Spa Ritual. Bonna Blue, No Room for the Blues, and Shark Attack.

After the dots, I put the Saran wrap over my nails and pushed down to make a marbled look.

 Then because this is a Christian group, I added a cross. This cross is a water decal from the Born Pretty Store that they gave me for previous review. I decided to try something new with it and paint the decal brown. (A-piers to be Tan by OPI) Since what you paint is the part that attaches to the nail, you could still see the intricate design of the decal. It ended up messy on my left hand, which I did first, but the right hand looked great!

I loved doing the other girls nails and it was great to see people walking around with manicures that I did. Plus one of the girls was up on stage to introduce our group and another did the rest of the singing at the morning service, so my nails were on stage! Our performances went really well and you can watch the videos here.

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Geometric

One of the themes for the NAIL link up this month was geometric. I really wanted to try out a couple of the polishes that I got at the Ulta 3 vending machine in Melbourne. I picked out two and decided on a geometric nail design using tape. This was the first tape mani that I did that was actually a success! I'm not sure what I did different, but I think that it might have been just waiting longer for the polish to dry before peeling off the tape.

The two colours I chose were Mulberry and Strawberry Sundae.

I started with the Strawberry Sundae. I actually painted it the night before I did the tape, which probably helped with the tape peeling off clean and easy. It was definitely dry if I had it on overnight! I also really liked this colour. I was very happy that I added this pink to my collection.

Once all the strips of tape were added in the desired pattern, I painted over with Mulberry. The colour is great, too! I could definitely see myself wearing it by itself if I was feeling too lazy to do nail art.

I waited for it to really dry between coats and after the last coat before I pulled off the tape. It was so clean and easy. I hope that's my luck with all my tape mani attempts from now one!

Although I love the Mulberry colour, it is hard to photograph. It was hard to get the purple to show up because it's so dark. I had to wait until the next day when I had sunlight again!

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