Ornaments in Branches

This came out looking pretty cool! I wanted to use my new glitter polish, and I thought it looked like lights nestled in christmas tree branches, so here we are! I hand-painted the tree branches and then stamped the ornaments in gold, and covered them with little hand-done designs. I should have probably used creme polishes for the ornaments (in retrospect) but oh well. Glitter!

The base here is three thin coats of Green Light by Emily de Molly. There were SO MANY white glitters in this one omg. It was a bit of a pain in the butt to remove as a result, but the polish is so pretty it is hard to argue with wearing it!

Colors:
~ Green with white glitter: Emily de Molly – Green Light
~ Light green: KBShimmer – Lime All Right
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Pink: Essie – Sunday Funday
~ Red: A England – Rosebower
~ Purple: A England – Crown of Thistles
~ Blue: KBShimmer – Now & Zen
~ Stamp: EdM – 03

It has been a while since I have posted a nail design that I liked as much as this. Somehow, mixing stamping and freehand on the same nail has been working for me. Yay! Hope you enjoyed, happy almost-Christmas, and happy end-of-Hanukkah (well, on Monday).

Christmas Curls

I wanted to create an abstract christmas tree design, and this is what I ended up with! I think it looks rather cool, but then again I am biased. The swirls were made by mixing three shades of green, although you can hardly tell. Oh well!

Colors:
~ Light green: Zoya – Tilda
~ Green: Zoya – Shawn
~ Dark green: Zoya – Hunter
~ Darkest green: Sinful Colors – Last Chance
~ Nude: OPI – Be There in a Prosecco
~ Gold: Sally Hansen – Go for Gold
~ Neon red: Emily de Molly – LE – 199
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Brown: Zoya – Dea
~ Stamps: Moyra – Ornaments 3

Looking back on this design (which I made last year) I love it even more. I don’t know why, it just somehow came out both elegant and fun, and quite holiday-appropriate without being in anyone’s face about it. Hope you enjoyed this as much as I did!

Reindeer Games

My nails broke, so I had to change my nail shape. I don’t like curved nails on myself, but sometimes when life gives you curved nails you have to turn them into reindeer noses! I don’t adore the end result (I probably shouldn’t have added the brown nose outlines) but they are cute!

Colors:
~ Grey glitter: Cadillacquer – Odette
~ Light brown: Zoya – Flynn
~ Brown: Zoya – Dea
~ Dark brown: Zoya – Louise
~ Red glitter: China Glaze – Ruby Red Pumps
~ Green: Zoya – Hunter
~ Red: Pure Ice – Siren
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White

I actually really love the smaller details with the holly and the double dotted eyes (to make them EXTRA cute) even if I think the nose outline was a bit of a faux-pas. I actually love pretty much all the nail art I will be posting this week leading up to Christmas, so enjoy! I also failed to make any Haunkkah nails, so its nothing but trees and reindeer :-p

Dotted Presents

I don’t think I have ever (successfully) made gift nails, and I wanted to! Of course the end result was a bit boring, so being my usual self I went and added dots to everything, so now we have a collection of holiday-appropriate dotted metallic/shimmer gift wrapped nails :-p I am still very proud of myself for those freehand bows.

Colors:
~ Purple glitter: Zoya – Valerie
~ Purple: Formula X – Ignition
~ Green glitter: Zoya – Ivanaka
~ Green: Zoya – Josie
~ Red glitter: Zoya – India
~ Red: Zoya – Sooki
~ Grey glitter: Zoya – Yuna
~ Grey: WOW – #333
~ Teal glitter: Julie G – Mermaid’s Tale
~ Teal: Zoya – Cecilia
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold

Maybe next time I should try stamping some wrapping paper-eque designs and just using that (plus a bow, of course). We shall see! It is a little ironic since I don’t even know that I currently own any bows. No one uses them anymore!

Santa Mints

This combines some cute santa art with peppermint and candy canes! Wins all around. I really enjoyed wearing this one, and somehow managed to pick a red shimmery base that really looked like velvet!

Colors:
~ Red holo: Nabi – Red
~ Nude: Zoya – Chantal
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Pink: Zoya – Jordan
~ Gold: Zoya – Tomoko

These are from last year, maybe I should do some cute santas again this year? Who knows! This nail art did not take nearly as long as it looks like it should have, so maybe I will. Hope you enjoyed!

Cute Holiday Animals

This design was loosely inspired by @nogti_shok with a cute penguin and dripping stars and snowflakes. My version went a bit….overboard. And my nails were too short to pull off the full effect! Still cute.

Colors:
~ Gold: CbL – Frohe Feiertage!
~ Red metallic: Zoya – Isla
~ Red: OPI – All I want for Christmas (is OPI)
~ Dark red: OPI – Visions of Love
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Orange: ULTA – Sun of a Gun
~ Stamps: BP – 185, Nicole Diary – L28, 120, 156

Sorry AGAIN for not posting on a regular schedule. I am busy, but not so busy I cannot post nail art! It just keeps dropping down my priority list. I would say blame the dog, but she is adorable so don’t blame her :-p. Hopefully I can get back into a regular posting groove. I am still painting fun designs on my nails, you just aren’t getting to see them as frequently!

Christmas Star

These nails were done at my in-laws, so they are a bit simple and very Christmas-y! I tried to use some of the 3D nail stickers that I was given as a mini holiday gift…but as usual with these types of stickers, they mostly just stuck out of my nail in funny directions. That said, I got to play with creating a loose gold glitter christmas tree, and that was quite fun!

Colors:
~ Red: KBShimmer – Chia-huahua
~ Green metallic: Zoya – Holly
~ Gold glitter: Emily de Molly – Chasing Gold
~ Gold: Sally Hansen – Gold Leaf

I don’t know why I have been so darn bad at editing photos, it does not take that long (I do minimal editing) but for some reason I am struggling to motivate myself. Assuming I don’t miss any more posting days, I should be able to get all my Christmas things up before the actual holiday. I already posted my Hanukkah nails spread throughout the year though! Sorry for the gap in posting, enjoy!

Glowing Pastel Lights

This one was FUN. I got a set of glow-in-the-dark polishes from Serum N5 and could not wait to start playing with them! I decided to see how they all compared to each other by making pastel christmas lights that actually glowed in the dark. I ended up using a pink jelly over the white one to make it pink, but the yellow, blue, and green are their original colors. Also not going to lie: they glowed nicely but NOTHING can compare to the neon bright happiness that is Dayglow. The others, although pretty, seemed weak in comparison, and I could hardly tell their glow colors apart. A bit disappointing but still fun!

Colors:
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Cream gold glitter: Dear Rus – Sparkle Milk 21
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Yellow GITD: Serum No5 – Dayglow
~ Green GITD: Serum No5 – Glowin’ of Eden
~ Blue GITD: Serum No5 – Blue Blazes
~ White GITD: Serum No5 – Pure Glow Getter
~ Pink jelly: Zoya – Paloma

I am torn between wanting to buy more glow in the dark polishes, and wanting to just use the ones that I have more often, although they are a bit hard to use as base colors because they are just thick enough to be difficult! Next year I will have to do full-nail christmas lights I think.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed and happy almost-Christmas! I have officially run out of seasonally appropriate manicures that I have previously saved up, so the next round of nail art is likely to be what I am currently wearing gasp or at least have worn in this calendar year.

Geometric Christmas Sweater

I have a secret: this design is from an easter plate, and was supposed to be for an easter egg. I have repurposed it and it tickles me. I added some dark gold glitter dots and stripes for a bit more interest, but otherwise this is just a moderately complicated stamp! I do wish there were more Hanukkah stamps though. Or even things I could PRETEND were Hanukkah stamps. Hooray for another year of hand-painted candles.

Colors:
~ Grey: Formula X – Marvelous
~ Red: OPI – All I Want for Christmas (is OPI)
~ Green: Zoya – Shawn
~ Gold: ILNP – Sparks May Fly
~ Stamp: Whats Up Nails – B017

I have finished editing the rest of the designs for this week, and honestly, I feel like I need to up my Christmas game again. The ones I have painted this year will be posted next year, and at least I have a santa in the mix! I suppose this is what happens when I off-post by a full year. Anyway, hope you enjoyed!

Minimalist Christmas

This design is a trick! I started with a glow in the dark almost-white base, and stamped over it with a white polish, a single snowflake on each nail that can only be seen in the dark (or at least that was the intent. Hidden snowflake!). I then stamped a geometric pattern in black and highlighted little bits of the black with gold. That was intended to be the finished product, but it looked boring, so I went in with red and green glitter as well and made it more festive.

The base is two coats of the white glow-in-the-dark polish Pure Glow Getter by Serum No 5. The polish, like most GITD polishes, goes on thick and slightly gritty, and is likely not appropriate for beginner nail artists (sadly). That said, it has a reasonable level of glow (especially when charged by the sun, indoor light was less effective as usual), and the design that I put over it, including the secret snowflake, really popped!

These nails kept surprising me when I was falling asleep 🙂 I can’t decide if I would want to do a fully hidden design again, or if that took away a bit from the fun since no one but me (and my husband I suppose) knew that the snowflakes were there.

Colors:
~ White GITD: Serum No5 – Pure Glow Getter
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Gold: Salon Perfect – Gold Leaf
~ Red: Emily de Molly – LE 28
~ Green: Zoya – Ivanka
~ Stamp: Nicole Diary – 120

In retrospect looking at the polishes I used with this manicure, I hope Zoya regrets making a bright sparkly green and naming it Ivanka, but who knows. It is a pretty color regardless! Hope you enjoyed!

Cute Santa

Merry Christmas! My husband just finished making me watch Elf (which is a horrible awkward movie, by the way) so this post is going up late. I figured it was only fair to humor him since his Christmas was so thoroughly downsized (to…just me) for COVID. 

Colors:
~ Red glitter: Emily de Molly – LE28
~ Nude: Zoya – Chantal
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Gold: OPI – All Sparkly And Gold
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Pink: Zoya – Jordan

Anyway, I painted these cute minimalist santas last year, and I am quite happy with how they turned out! As far as impressive manis go, these are not that, but they get the point across. I am particularly proud of the weird stylized santa hat on my thumb. Hope you all had a great holiday season, whatever you celebrated, and stayed safe!

Red/Green Mix

So, this was a bit of a disaster but I do like the fluid nail art! I basically just grabbed a few colors and made things up as I went along. I think it shows, but honestly I don’t care :-p

Colors:
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Red: OPI – All I Want For Christmas (is OPI)
~ Red fluid: Dance Legend – Spot It Red
~ Red glitter: China Glaze – Ruby Red Pumps
~ Green: Zoya – Shawn
~ Stamps: Born Pretty – Halloween L004, Valentines L002, hehe – 028 

Today it went from 65 and sunny with lots of wind to 28 and pouring out. I don’t even know what winter thinks its doing at this point? Oh well. One more Christmas-appropriate manicure after this one. Hope you enjoyed!

Green/Red Mix

So, it turns out I must have at some point deleted the entry I wrote where I stated which polishes I used for this design an why. I can take a very educated guess, but I am winging it! Regardless, we have entered formally into christmas nail art week, so all this week will be reds, greens, golds, and a santa to cap it off :-p

Colors (my best guess):
~ Red glitter: China Glaze – Ruby Red Pumps
~ Green: Zoya – Shawn
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold
~ Stamps: Nicole Diary – 120

And thats it for today! I hope you guys have all come up with some fun (socially distanced) way to celebrate the holidays. Enjoy!

Holiday Vines

How about some festive vine designs? Really I just wanted to use this base polish because it is almost perfectly holiday, green with lots of red and gold shimmers and flakes! Of course I just went and covered up 90% of it, but its the though that counts :-p 

Colors:
~ Green glitter: Rogue Lacquer – Princess of the Underworld
~ Red: Covergirl – Forever Festive
~ Gold: Essie – Good as Gold 

Hope you enjoyed! Happy end of Hanukkah (even if I didn’t post any super hanukkah nails this year) and start of the ONE WEEK that is christmas (as opposed to my husband who believes that christmas starts the moment thanksgiving ends). Harumph! 

Negating the Flowers

I never do negative space. NEVER. But I saw these nails by UrbanNailArt and I knew that I had to recreate them. Unfortunately, I don’t have even close to the same stamps for either the flowers or the gold, so I winged it! I wish the lines of my flowers were a little thicker and those of my vines were a bit thinner, but overall I’m pretty happy! The gold is Born Pretty Store gold powder (serious I am obsessed with stamping with this stuff) over black, but you can’t see the black! I think in the end the flowers looked like poinsettias, and red and gold are seasonally-appropriate; regardless these were fun to do and fun to wear!

Colors:
~ Red: OPI – All I Want for Christmas (is OPI)
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamps: UC – Lovely Leaves 2, BP – L067, BP – 19

Hope you enjoyed! Be prepared to see a LOT more stamps involving this gold powder (which can be found here for $1.47 for a 0.1g pot) including this Friday’s post. I may be a tiny bit obsessed with it 😀

Green Crossing

Super simple and super fast. This is one of the quasi-Christmas themed manicures I actually did over the holiday break. I more or less only took reds and greens with me, with a few stamping plates. I decided to do a tone-on-tone manicure using the wonderful opacity of every A England polish, and one of my favorite (if underused) dark green holos, Ski Lodge.

This whole manicure took less than an hour, and it was mostly waiting for Ski Lodge to dry before I could stamp. The design ended up being somewhat subtle, but since the nails were a vibrant shade of forest green, they were themselves far from subtle!

Colors:
~ Dark green holo: ILNP – Ski Lodge
~ Green holo: A England – Dragon
~ Stamp: Whats Up Nails – B015

Anyway, that’s all for today! I returned from my trip to Iceland (!!!) yesterday evening (assuming the flight wasn’t somehow messed up), and normal posting should resume Wednesday.

Marching Copper Trees

To be fair, when I painted these (well, stamped them) it was a few weeks out from Christmas. I always thought this particular stamp looked rather like christmas trees if you only used half of it! Otherwise it looks like stylized stalactites and stalagmites.

Of course, any manicure using an awesome mutlichrome and a rose gold stamping polish is going to look pretty good. This was easy to make pretty!

Colors:
~ Red-gold multichrome: ILNP – Greatness
~ Rose gold: Essie – Penny Talk
~ Stamp: BM – XL158

Short, sweet, and straightforward! If it helps, the reason this post is so short is that I am taking Step 3 of the medical board exam tomorrow. And Friday. Because of course it is a two day test *grumble grumble* but after this Friday I am free again!

Candystripped

You guys, I am terrible! I am sorry it has been a week since my last post…I just didn’t have time to put together any of this since then! I was at my in-laws for Christmas and then my sister (and her adorable puppy) came to visit me, and there wasn’t time for photo editing! I am wearing the same design on my nails that I placed a week ago. A WEEK. And it is chipped and awful. Sorry nails!

Anyway, this design was supposed to be candy canes, and was intended to go up last Wednesday just after Christmas. I failed. But I am going to post it anyway!

The base color here is three thin coats of Aphrodite by Zoya, which is a pretty orange-leaning bright red with glitter, but unfortunately is not QUITE opaque. I will likely end up using this as a jelly rather than a glitter crelly due to the three coat problem! But I love how bright it is. I bought Aphrodite (and like 15 other polishes) during black friday/cyber monday deals.

Colors:
~ Red glitter: Zoya – Aphrodite
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Stamp: Born Pretty – Halloween L004

Sorry for the late post, and I hope you enjoyed anyway! Happy new years!!! (I swear I also had a real new years post but of course it isn’t edited yet. C’est la vie!)

Red and Green Strokes

One day closer to gift-day (aka Christmas) and one more red/green manicure!

I started with red glitter, then double stamped with a white-to-green and green-to-white gradient (I don’t know why) and when that just looked messy I stamped with dark red. Despite the completely unplanned and frequently ugly nature of this manicure as it developed, I actually quite like the end result!

Colors:
~ Red glitter: KBShimmer – Ruby
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Green: Zoya – Tilda
~ Dark red: OPI – Visions of Love
~ Stamps: Lina – Make Your Mark 02, BM – XL205

I think that is all for today. If you haven’t yet, please go vote for flightofwhimsy at the Nail Art Canada holiday contest! Hope you enjoyed!

Santa Claus is Coming to Town

This is my entry for this years nail art canada holiday challenge! I have entered for the past 5 or so years, and last year I won the internal competition! Most years I just pick my very favorite holiday mani that I had done up to that point…but this year I painted something specifically for the challenge. I have to say I am quite pleased! The design itself was based off a press-on nail set by Project Nails.

I started with a blue holographic base (mostly because I wanted to use a one-coat base and the halo hues collection from Color Club are basically magic). I then brush-gradiented using blue and purple scattered holo crellies and splotched on some dark teal jelly. Once that was all top coated and dry, it was design time!

I basically freehanded some rooftops, then a moon, then snow, and finally windows and sled. The hardest part of the whole thing was certainly the reindeer, I still don’t love them but without using acrylic I think this is the best I can do! The only part of this mani that isn’t free-handed is the stars: those are stamps. The top of the moon was made from playing with variations of white and yellow to make a little gradient.

Colors:
~ Blue holo: Color Club – Over the Moon
~ Blue scattered holo: Milani – Cyberspace
~ Purple scattered holo: Milani – Hi-Res
~ Teal jelly: Zoya – Frida
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Yellow: OPI – Never a Dulles Moment
~ Light orange: KBShimmer – Orange You Glad I Didn’t Say Banana
~ Stamp: BM – XL213

Please go vote for this entry in the challenge, it would be amazing to win! You can find the link here and sprinkled throughout the rest of this post. I will keep posting the link for the remainder of the contest. Hope you enjoyed, and thank you for voting!!