Christmas Mani Round up!

Hello!!!

Hope all of you lovely readers had an amazing Christmas! I know that I did! I am currently typing up this post from brand new desktop computer!!! I asked for one from Santa because I knew that I needed one. I had been using my mom's netbook for a while since she doesn't use it all that often but then it would get frustrating with the tiny mouse pad and very small screen. I would use my dad's computer but he would get mad about the pictures I had to upload to for the blog and how much space it took up even though I keep most of them on a USB drive.

So in todays post I am going to show you the two Christmas manicures that I wore the week of Christmas and on Christmas itself.

This holiday season I got back into nail art and had even purchased a new small set of brushes from Wal-Mart. They are the ones that one can use to paint on miniatures and dolls. My sister saw this and asked if I had a professional brush set and I told her no, so for Christmas she got me the Cheeky Beauty 26 piece professional brush set! I am absolutely in love with it! It even comes with two teeny tiny dotting tools.

Anyway these manicures were not made with those brushes, future ones will. The ones I bought at Wal-Mart. Ok so the first manicure is one that I wish I could of kept on all week long but it chipped way too much and I had to take it off.

The first design was  inspired by the YouTuber CutePolish. I watched several of her Christmas tutorials from this year and last year and went at it. I did a mix of nail art, I had Santa's coat on one finger, elves on other and six reindeer, including Rudolph!

If you want to see her tutorials for all these awesome designs for next Christmas then go to her YouTube page and check them out!

The polishes that I used to create these fun designs:

Santa's Coat: China Glaze Cranberry Splash, Sinful Colors Black Striper, Pure Ice Superstar, and Sally Hansen Golden-I.

The Elves: China Glaze Jolly Holly, Sinful Colors Black Striper and Sally Hansen Golden-I.

The Reindeer: China Glaze Foie Gras, OPI Crepe Susizette, Pure Ice Superstar and Sinful Black Striper. (For Rudolph's nose I dotted Cranberry Splash instead of black. )

Please excuse the chip wear and the horrid cuticles!! I took these photos a day or so after work.

I really enjoyed this manicure I think it got the most attention out of the two! A lot of people liked the reindeer especially.

For my second manicure that I wore and actually wore on Christmas was inspired by an organza bag that we had with all the Christmas stuff. It was gold with gold paisley. There was no way I could recreate it so I decided to take a red base and recreate the gold swirls.

Using once again Cranberry Splash as my base color I waited for it to dry and proceeded to paint on my swirls. Using my tiniest brush from the Wal-Mart pack I got I gently drew the swirls with a very light hand. I definitely thought that less is more with this so I didn't take the swirls to far.

Now that I have my new brush set I think I will be trying these nails again in different color combos!

I hope you all enjoyed this Christmas post! Next up will be my picks from the Top 10 polishes of 2012! I have had that list running in my head since about October! I can't wait to share it with you guys soon!!

Talk to you all very soon!
Nicole

Semi-Successful and yet to me Disasticures.

Wow! What a slacker I have become! I haven't posted a holiday manicure since the beginning of the month!!!

I was planning on posting a lot more but every time I sat down to do a manicure it would come out horrible and literally as I have heard my amazing nail blogger friends call a disasticure!!

I tried to do candy cane nails several times only to be disappointed in my stripe work. I can't draw lines free hand with polish for the life of me and at times this was even with a striper!

So in today's post I want to show you two manicures I did and how I felt they were disasticures. I feel I was way to quick with them, patience is not my forte.

First up we have Santa's coat. I saw on Facebook from China Gazes Official page some awesomely cute Christmas nail art and wanted to recreate some.

So I started out with my favorite red. Yeah you know the one... 100 points to the first person to name it!

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Ok s you guessed it China Glaze Cranberry Splash. I bought a back up of this color because it is that amazing!

Then I took some new nail art brushes that I got at Walmart and painted a black stripe across the nail for Santa's Belt. Once that was dry I took Sally Hansen Golden-I and made the belt buckle. I also added China Glaze Winter Holly on my ring finger and did some holly berries in the corner.
Now my friends loved it, thought it was cute and good. Me I could see the unevenness and where I missed spots and it just irked me. Needless to say I took it off a day or so later.

My next attempt for something Christmassy was candy canes with my new brushes....... Yeah no, it didn't work. The only nail that came out well was my pinkie. I tried every way, freehand, tape nothing made it look nice. I never took pictures of that manicure.

The next manicure was a semi success and I did like it but because of the nail art supplies I used and combined with my job it wouldn't last long.

It started out with me receiving a Christmas swap package from Adri from Mories Nail Art! She is truly an amazing friend and sent me my first Klean Colors and some awesome L.A. Girl polishes I never got my hands on! I also sent her a package but it hasn't reached her yet! Hopefully soon! If it doesn't get there Ill cry!

Anyway for this manicure I kept my pinkies as candy canes since they came out the best and painted the rest of my nails with Klean Color Winter wonderland! Winter wonderland is a beautiful sliver shimmer polish that is packed with small silver, red, and blue glitter. It really does make you think of snow and all the holidays and things that go with it.

It took about three coats to get opaque. Once it dried it painted tiny Christmas trees on my middle fingers with last years China Glaze Jolly Holly and amazing evergreen polish that is opaque in one coat. Once that dried I took some of the nail art supplies that Adri sent me in our swap packages , I got a pack of six mini glass jars of clear rhinestones, black rhinestones, two jars of fish egg supplies and these nifty tear drop-flower petal glitter. I used the blue tear drop glitter to decorate the trees and a clear rhinestone as the star. On my thumbs I dotted three red dots for holly berries and used the green tear drop glitters and the leaves. Once it all dried and was adhered I put on my top coat and was on my way.

I have to say I did actually like this last manicure. It wasn't too bad. For me working with nail art supplies like the tear drop sequins or rhinestones is new and i definitely need to learn to be a little neater with it. Although the manicure I'm rocking now I love and you will see that in tomorrows post!!

Until then!
Nicole

Merry Christmas! And a kitty!

Hey everyone! Merry Christmas! (If that is what you celebrate of course!)

 This has been a fantastic holiday for me. Santa was very kind in bringing me some very lovely things. I got a new digital camera, it is the Kodak Easy Share z5010 with a 21x zoom wide angle lens and films in HD and everything. I am so in love.

Oh Christmas Tree!

So today I have my final holiday manicure for you guys. Its a Christmas tree!

I was happy with the way this came out, since my nail art isn't at its best I figured maybe half a tree would suffice?