Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone! And if you don’t celebrate Christmas then I wish your day is filled with plenty of good food, family, friends and love! ♥

This manicure is my entry for December’s Nail Art Ideas Linkup.  The theme this week is FESTIVE FRENCH MANI and I’m realizing how seldom I wear French manicures!!  I free-handed the white tips using a skinny brush and cheap NYC brand nail polish called French White Tip.  I could’ve used tape or nail guide stickers, but sometimes that feels like a hassle to me.  I did a light coat of a Seche Vite French Manicure color called Chic over top too.  This may be my favorite French mani color ever!  It’s very transparent but one one coat does the trick.  It looks so sheer and natural and it has the slightest shimmer in it which is not even noticeable, but it keeps the nail from looking dull or flat!

I’m happy with my finished frenchie, especially since I painted the white tip a little high to create an illusion that my nails are longer than they actually are.  It’s all smoke and mirrors, girls! lol

Now how did I do the little holly design?  That’s actually a diy decal that I made last week. I stamped the holly design onto a plastic baggie using black nail polish and my MoYou Festive 03 stamping plate.  Then I used some green nail polish to paint over and fill in the holly leaves. I topped that with a few swipes of topcoat and let it dry well.  The hollies peeled off the baggie like perfect little stickers.  Then I used some tiny scissors –you know those teensy cuticle trimmer scissors that we all have but never use?  They are perfect for cutting up decals!  I trimmed my holly bunches from three leaves down to two so they’d become smaller to fit better on my nails.  I laid the decal on my accent fingernail, dotted some clear polish on top to secure a few red rhinestones, then I topcoated the whole thing.  Here’s a shot of both hands…

These Christmas nails are a bit tamer than my usual style!  I felt a little bare wearing such a simple french manicure.  But don’t worry, I’ve already blinged them up by adding holo glitter that santa left in my stocking.  If you give me nail polish, I will be using it as soon as humanly possible. 🙂

WHAT DID YOU WEAR ON YOUR NAILS FOR CHRISTMAS??  Did you go simple like me, or did you wow everyone with your major cray cray nails? 

Warm wishes to you and yours- from the bottom of my heart!  Talk soon, Craftynail xo

N.A.I.L. Dec Theme 4 – Festive French Manis

Dotted and stamped! Another holiday manicure…

I love nail stamping with my Konad, Cheeky and MoYou plates… but sometimes a solid-colored stamp is just too boring for me.  I’m always looking for fun ways to complicate a simple stamp manicure.  Then it hit me: why not do a dotticure, then stamp over top of it!?

I like the end result!  It has a sorta country-appeal to it.  Kinda like shabby chic wall-paper or something.  It didn’t take long to do, especially since my MoYou XL stamper is soft and squishy so I don’t need to press very hard.  Which means my underneath layers of polish don’t have to be dry when I stamp.  That saves me a lot of waiting/dry-time.  I hafta say, since I got my MoYou stamper- I haven’t even touched my old Konad one at all!

Here’s what I’m wearing:

♥ Sally Hansen Maximum Growth – as my basecoat

♥ OPI My Vampire is Buff – three coats

♥ AVON Ruby Slipper & AVON Garden Green w/a dotting tool – for the dots

♥ Black Konad polish and my MoYou London Festive 03 plate – for the stamping

♥ Seche Vite – as my topcoat

When I topcoated my thumb it seemed very prone to smudging.  So I had to really slather the seche vite on super thick as to not drag the brush across my design.  I hate how stamping smudges so easy.  I’m wondering if different polishes smudge differently?  I dunno, but Konad polish surely smudges!  I SHOULD DO A SMUDGING EXPERIMENT WITH DIFFERENT BRANDS!  I’ll put that on my blog to-do list.

Only two days left til Christmas!!  You ready for it???  Tonight we just need to make a big batch of cookies and then we are all set for the festivities!

Green Glitter Christmas Nails

I wanted to squeeze in another holiday mani before Christmas day arrives.  Ready or not, it’s right around the corner!

I got this cute green glitter polish in an ABC Store in Las Vegas earlier this month.  It’s called Island Volcano by Island Girl Hawaii and it’s a perfect polish for a Christmas mani!  I also grabbed a few other items from this brand and I love that I own Hawaiian nail products now!  Especially the beautiful bottle of cuticle oil with dried flowers floating in it.  I’ll have to show you sometime!

Here’s what I’m wearing…

♥ Essence Peel Off Base Coat – 1 coat

♥ Funky Fingers in Limelight – 2 coats

♥ Island Girl Hawaii in Island Volcano – 2 coats

♥ no-name brand red studs – I like that they look like tiny maraschino cherries 🙂

♥ Seche Vite topcoat

I’d also like to add this manicure to the INSPIRED BY CHRISTMAS COLOURS inlinkz for #ChristmasWithFLP which is a cute December Nail Challenge that I found out about on Lekker Lacquer’s blog.  There’s a lot of fun themes for this Christmas Challenge… check it out here!

Early Christmas Prezzies for Crafty!

Here’s a couple stocking stuffers that I got from my boss.  She knows me so well!

This Miracle Birth Control Gum cracks me up!

Here’s a bottle of hand-blended Brijits Digits polish from my good friend Brijit! It’s a semi-matte brick red called Yowl.  It’s formulated to have a rubberized finish, but topcoat transforms it to super duper glossy!  Here’s two coats of Yowl with one coat of seche vite on top…

And here I am modeling Yowl with my new fingerless gloves.  These gloves were a gift to myself!  They have silver studs attached to the tops of them so I couldn’t resist.  They will keep my hands warm while I’m kicking around my chilly house and I can even paint my nails while wearing them.  🙂  Perfect!

I usually end up buying myself stuff when I’m supposed to be shopping for others.  Strange how that always seems to happen.  😉

Did you get any early Christmas presents? Do tell!

Shopping Nails for #NAILLINKUP

It’s week two of the December N.A.I.L. Linkup and the theme is shopping.  If you’re like me, the word shopping in December means a mad scramble to finish your holiday shopping list!  Luckily, I got most of my shopping done on friday.  The only time I ever really visit Kohl’s is Christmastime… and what amazing deals they have!  Then they give you Kohls CASH which is icing on the cake!  I got gifts for everyone on my list and now I’ve even got gifts on my nails! Let’s take a look at my shopping nails for #NAILLINKUP…..

The wrapping paper and bows came out great!  They’re actually decals that I made.  I’ve shown you how to make decals here, but I’ve never tried it with stamping before.  So basically, I stamped the gifts onto a plastic baggie using my MoYou Festive 03 plate.  Then I painted on top of the gift stamps with green/gold/blue and then I topcoated it.  Once it was dry (overnight) I peeled it off the baggie, flipped it over, et voila!  A pretty little painted present!  I got the idea from Indian Ocean Polish’s blog.  Everytime I login to pinterest I go ga-ga over her decals so I just had to try them out!  Here’s her tutorial- you should check it out!

I’m also happy to wear red again.  I’m loving red more and more lately!  Shown here is Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Cherry Red.  I’m really impressed with it’s formula!

Be sure to check out the other girls’ designs for the Linkup- see the blue guy below!  If you’d like to join in, here’s more info on the linkup…

N.A.I.L. December Theme 2 – Shopping

Candy swirls for my friends

Hey all!  I haven’t posted in a few days but that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been doin lotsa nail designs!   I’ve been busy making some festive diy nail decals using some of my moyou plates…and I also did some holiday candy swirl manicures for my friends.  Let’s check them out….

For Vanessa’s nails we didn’t really have a plan, but we wanted to go with glittery red and gold.  I started with two coats of Butter London Chancer, a red glitter that glows just like Dorothy’s shoes!  Then we dotted her ring fingers to created some triangular christmas tree shapes.  Accent nails are always fun!  Then for the other fingers we sponged some gold glitter on the tips.  It looked so festive and glimmery, but we didn’t stop there… we were on a roll.  Vanessa wanted some stamping on top for extra pizazz so we decided on MoYou Festive 03 plate which has a cute peppermint candy swirl design.  We used a silver polish for stamping, but then I free-hand outlined the stamp with some dark green polish to make the swirl stand out.  I really like the effect that the outline created.  We also added some rhinestone bling to the center of each nail and on top of our accent nail xmas trees!  Here they are ↓

Vanessa’s nail are usually much longer but she had to cut them recently for her piano class.  She also has an upcoming piano recital for her final grade.  Pianists nails should be short and simple so I hope these nails don’t get in the way during her recital.  However, I think she should get extra credit for nails like these.  Don’t you agree?  😉

Now let’s take a look at the nails I did for Sue!  The candy swirl design was a winner in my mind, so I tried it again on Sue’s nails, but using a different color combo.  Check them out↓

I used a cream white OPI called Alpine Snow as a base color and then stamped on top using a red holo called Sparkle Ruby by L.A. Girl.  It’s funny how the photos look like we used pink instead of red. We decided to use a photo editing filter to fancy up the pics- but they still look pink.  Oh well!

We hope that Sue’s candy swirl manicure lasts a while since she has some MBA graduation festivities coming up.  I used Orly Bonder as a basecoat so hopefully they will withstand the test of time.  🙂  And congrats to Sue on her MBA- all her hard work has paid off and I’m so proud of her!

If anyone wants to drive themselves over to my house- I’ll gladly paint your nails too!  But we just got slammed with a massive snowfall in NY so I assume most of my friends will be hibernating this weekend. 🙂

See you tomorrow for my next holiday manicure!  The theme for our December NAIL LINKUP this week is SHOPPING and I have some fun homemade nail decals to show you.  Cheers!

Holiday Memories Nails

It’s the third and final week of Nail Polish Canada’s 2nd Annual Holiday Nail Art Challenge!  What a bunch of fun this challenge has been!

The theme for this week’s nail art is HOLIDAY MEMORIES so I tried to think back to one moment that stood out to me.  It winds up being Christmas 2010 and it was my first holiday with my boyfriend Justin.  He’s an amazing artist (he paints mostly movie paintings and posters) but he worked on something different that season- an awesome landscape painting that he created just for me.  He painted Lake Minnewaska since we went there on one of our first dates.   He even had the painting professionally framed.  I cried when I unwrapped it- it was a complete surprise and so thoughtful.  I thought, “wow, this guy’s a keeper”!  I’ve included a photo of the painting so you can see too.  This is what I based today’s nail art on!

I painted a few nails with trees, lake and clouds to simulate the landscape.  Ok, I don’t have Justin’s painting skills, but not many people do ! lol!  I tried my best.  Then I painted my other nails with X’s and O’s to give the feeling of love and romance since it was our very first Christmas together.  I dunno why my green O’s look so bright in the pics though…they weren’t quite so bright in real life.  But I like the green and red combo- it gives it more of a festive feel.  I really like the x’s and o’s pattern too- I will have to try this again sometime!  Maybe for valentines day if I change up the colors.

Anyway, I hope you like my nails! If you’d like to vote for me or any other mani here’s the link: HOLIDAY MEMORIES CONTEST.  There’s been a ton of talent so far on the Nail Polish Canada page, it will be hard to pick a favorite!

Thanks for reading and Happy Holidays!