Obligatory Christmassy Stuff

Well Ho Ho Ho to y'all! I did some Christmas nail art in the few moments I had to myself in the raucous Christmas season! Yeah okay so I'm posting on Boxing Day, but I know a lot of you are still celebrating the Big Day, so I wanted to share. Hope you're ready for a whole lotta green, red and gold!

More after the jump......



This first extra-sparklicious mani uses Essie Good as Gold as the gold base, with a sprinkling of China Glaze Angel Wings over top for that scrummy glittery holo goodness. Essie No Place Like Chrome is the base under the accent nail, with (what else!) China Glaze Ruby Pumps and Running in Circles for the design. I used nail striping tape from Born Pretty Store, which is also where the little tip glequins came from. 

Maximum Christmas with minimum effort - this took me maybe 20 mins to do? And I did the other hand, but I smooshed the diamonds taking the tape off in the wrong order >.<!

      For anyone who's wondering, the accent nail basics are as follows:
- Apply base colour. Give it PLENTY of time to dry (properly, trust me)
- When base is completely dry, apply striping tape in whatever design you like (criss-cross like this or simple stripes are easiest to start with).
- With a small brush, carefully fill in the spaces between your pieces of tape. If you're only using one colour, you can paint over the whole nail, nice and easy =).
- (this was the hardest bit for me) Remove the tape in the reverse order to how you put them on. Not super important, but if it crosses itself, it gets veeeeery messy trying to take off tape in different directions at once. Try to pull the tape back on itself - that'll give you the cleanest lines. 
- Top coat. Lots of top coat. LOTS of top coat. Voilà!

I really quite liked this one. Very easy, but super festive. No guessing what the theme is!

Forgot to mention, DOULBE WHAMMY! I did these ones too, but didn't heart them quite so hard. More red, green and gold, with a few more BPS rhinestones. I liked this, but it was less practical than I would have liked, but meh. Shinies!

Two coats of OPI Red Hot Rio, gold is Essie's Good as Gold, and green is China Glaze Running in Circles. 

The tree was done by applying wide strips of normal sticky tape (over very very dry base colour) from the corner of the tip to the centre of the base to make the triangle shape. Over that I applied randomly placed pieces of the thin nail striping tape across where the triangle would be. I covered the whole nail in (admittedly quite generous helpings of) Running in Circles, then removed the tape - most recent first, working back to the big side pieces. Then it needed more bling, so more bling it got! Rhinestones from BornPrettyStore.com.

So I do hope you all have / had / are having a VERY Merry Christmas, and that you get to spend time with friends, family, and loved ones during the season. I've got more than a day off consecutively, so I'm hugely excited about this. It'll be the longest I've gone without setting an alarm since I began my amazing job in March! Sleep, and too-long-put-off-housework - I couldn't be happier!

Love to y'all, and stay safe this holiday season, lovelies =)