Christmas Tree Wrapping Paper

Last weekend was the annual Christmas party held by the owners of the company I work for and I wanted to do something new on my nails for the party.  I decided to try out the little abstract Christmas tree design on the newest Bundle Monster set.  It is from plate BM-321.  I was actually planning to use the Christmas tree stamp along with a few other Christmas themed stamps like the gift box and the ornament but I didn't like the way that they were stamping so I decided to just stick with the trees.  I was afraid that the trees would be too plain completely by themselves, so I came across a swirly type design on Bundle Monster plate BM-224 and stamped it a couple times on each nail as a background to the trees.  The final result ended up reminding me of something you might see on Christmas wrapping paper.

For my base color, I used Orly Dazzle.  I stamped the swirl design with Konad Special Polish in white.  Then using Konad green for the tree and Konad red for the tree base, I stamped about four trees randomly on top of the swirls on each nail.

I really like Orly Dazzle as a base for stamping.  I've used it before and I love the way the stamped designs look over the silver background.

I'll probably do at least one or maybe two more Christmas type manicures before the holiday, but I don't know if I'll have time to actually post them until after Christmas.  So if I don't get a chance before Tuesday, here's wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!!!

Christmas Lights

For my second Winter mani of the season, I leaned a bit more towards a Christmas design instead of just a basic Winter theme.  I've been wanting to try out the Christmas light bulb design on the 2012 Bundle Monster plates since I first bought the set, so I figured now was as good a time as any to give it a shot.

I started out with a couple coats of Orly Au Champagne, then went over that with one coat of Sonnetarium Snowfall.  I picked out 4 colors from my Konad Special Polishes to use for the bulbs: orange, blue, yellow and red.  The bulb design can be found on plate BM-318.  For each bulb, I stamped using one of the 4 colors and some Konad Special Polish in green for the little light socket part of the design.  Then I used the same green Konad polish to freehand some wires connecting all the bulbs.

The only issue I had with this design was that the yellow bulbs were a lot harder to see in real life than they are in the pictures.  You had to get really close to see the detail in the yellow bulbs but the other colors really popped well on the white background.  Snowfall over Au Champagne was gorgeous all by itself.  I didn't take any shots of it without the stamping (D'oh!), but it was so pretty that I think I might have to use this combination again at some point this Winter for another manicure.  And I should have a new post up later this week of the design I have on right now, that I did to wear to my office Christmas Party last night.  It reminds me of Christmas tree wrapping paper.

December Snowflakes on Plaid

When December rolled around, I wanted to do something winter themed but without diving right into all the Christmas designs just yet.  We haven't had any major snowstorms so far this winter but the weekend I painted this design we did have a few small flurries, so I guess I had snowflakes on the brain.  I decided to stamp some snowflakes over a plaid design.  (Yes, more plaid from me.  I love plaid.  Be warned...'cause there's more coming.)  The chilly weather makes me think of wrapping up in a warm flannel blanket.

It turned out even better than I had pictured it in my head.  I didn't want to take this off at the end of the week.  I started with three coats of China Glaze Recycle.  Then I stamped the plaid design from Konad plate m60 with Konad Special Polish in red, then the same plaid design again using Konad Special Polish in black.  The snowflakes are both Bundle Monster designs.  The spiky looking snowflake is from plate BM14 and the more lace-like snowflake is from plate BM-319.  I just alternated their placement on each nail and stamped them with Konad Special Polish in white, then used a dotting tool and the same white polish to add some dots to fill in the empty space.

I loved the end result.  Loved it hard.  This might be my favorite manicure of 2012 actually.  I can see myself repeating this at some point this winter, with a different plaid under the flakes or maybe even with the exact same colors.  I loved the look of the grey plaid so much.

Don't Call It a Comeback.

Although I guess you could call it that, it has been three months since I last posted.  Three months exactly actually, which I didn't realize until just right now.  I last posted on September 9th and it is now December 9th.  That doesn't mean that I stopped painting my nails, it just means that I kind of put off posting about them.  I couldn't tell you what the reasons were 'cause I honestly don't know.  I just didn't have the urge to put together any blog posts for a while, didn't even really bother checking in on all the blogs I usually follow.  I think I started to reevaluate the whole nail obsession in the past few months.  I had sort of gotten away from what I liked the most, which was painting my nails and doing designs, and instead got caught up in everyone talking about all the new colors and collections and trying to buy every new, cool thing I saw.  Which left me with a ton of polishes I haven't even used yet and some credit card bills I wasn't too happy about.  So I want to go back to what got me excited about polish in the first place...nail art and basically using what I already own.  I don't need to have every single new polish that comes out.  Not to say I won't buy one or two if something irresistible comes along, but honestly, it's been almost as long as I last posted since I bought a new bottle of polish.  And that doesn't bother me at all!

As I mentioned, I've still been doing my nails this whole time and I have still been taking pictures, so I'm going to try to do a couple posts over the next week or so just to run through what I've had on my nails the past three months.  They will be mixed in with some of the more recent designs because I have a few Christmas type posts that I want to get up this month.  So some stuff will be a little out of order, but really does anyone care?!

So after I wore Cult Nails Deal With It, I tried out two others from the Coco's Untamed collection, Annalicious and Spontaneous.  First up was Annalicious, which I used as a base for a bandanna inspired stamp design.

Like a lot of my stamp designs, I like to test them out on a nail wheel first and when I tested this, the white didn't quite pop out on the red like it does on a real bandanna.  So I stamped the design, from Konad plate m60, with Konad Special Polish in black first then re-stamped with Special Polish in white.  The black shadow made the white pop out a lot more against the background red.

I absolutely loved this and plan to do it with a lot of other colors as a base.  After Annalicious, I tried out Spontaneous.  I also used it as a base for a stamping design, this time I used Bundle Monster plate BM-306 from the most recent 2012 set.  I stamped with Konad Special Polish in pastel violet.

I loved the final look, although my stamping on this one came out a bit blurry.  I'm definitely a Cult Nails fan though.  Easy application, great colors and great wear time on these polishes.  

I've got about eight more designs that I did over the past three months, not counting the two I've done so far in December that are more winter/holiday themed, so I'll probably try grouping two or three together in posts later in the week, like I did with this one.  And I apologize if anyone read the blog post title and now has "Mama Said Knock You Out" stuck in their head, but you know what they say, ladies love Cool James.