holiday nail stamping

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!

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!