Jingle bells, jingle bells...

For a Christmas party last weekend, I wanted to do another Christmas inspired manicure. I hadn't used the bells on one of my Monster plates, so I decided gold bells with red ribbons would be perfect for the night!

It's been a week since I blogged?

Oops! I better post these last few Christmas nails before Christmas is over!

Let it snow!

Happy Holly-days!

I wanted to use some more Christmas stamps from my Konad and I loved the holly berries. In my head, I saw a light green base with dark green holly and red berries so that's what I tried. The green on green didn't show up well and the berries looked black. Without removing that, I painted a white base so I could try a light green holly and that turned out so much better. Even the berries looked healthier!

Candy cane tips.

Still feeling in the Christmas spirit, I did these candy cane inspired tips for the weekend. They were cute and really easy to do free hand.

Tis the season!

For holiday nails!

I had gotten this red glitter polish, Finger Paints Santa Kisses, awhile back at Sally's. It's a great glitter but it took a lot to get a thick coat because I didn't use a base coat.

Then, using a toothpick that I had cut to make a flat end, I dotted on some white polish to make the puffy cotton parts and voila! A Santa hat. Very festive.

Rainbows and butterflies...

Minus the butterflies. I'll paint those later!


I decided to do a rainbow manicure after my last striping one. I liked the different colors and I figured I could add a couple more and just make it as close to a rainbow as I could get with only five colors.

I went with the colors shown - red, orange, yellow, green, and blue. I could have gotten a purple in there, too, but I like the different nails changing into the rainbow so I didn't have anywhere to add the purple.

This manicure turned out cute. I had a hard time getting equal sections of colors on my thumb, as you can see, but it didn't really ruin the rainbow effect for me. I still liked it!

Magnetic nail polish.

I ordered this magnetic nail polish a few weeks ago and had actually forgotten about it until a friend asked me how it was. So I figured I needed to try it out and let her know.

The polish is Nails Inc., and it's not an American brand. The directions were in French. So I headed to Google to figure out how to work the magnetic magic.

The directions were simple. Paint one coat and let dry (see first pic). Then paint a second coat on one nail and immediately hold the magnet in the lid of the polish over the nail. That didn't work out for me so well. The magnet is supposed to pull the metal pieces in the polish to the surface and make a cool design. But the magnet is flat and my nails are curved so I basically got a big blob of metal in the middle of my nail. After that, I started moving the magnet around to see what I could come up with in regards to design.

It was really cool to see the polish change after having the magnet about it. A couple nails came out really neat and a couple didn't. I think I could benefit with practice. Overall, I really liked the polish and the idea. It was difficult to get a picture that accurately showed what the nails looked like. So I just posted several. My apologies for the one extra blurry picture. Blogger has decided that I'm not allowed to delete it for some reason.

My first leopard print.

I've been wanting to try doing leopard print on my nails for awhile but I wasn't sure how it was going to turn out. At first, I didn't like it at all. It was hard for my perfectionist personality to let go on this one. I didn't want the dots to be perfectly round and the black around the dots isn't supposed to be even. After I finished, though, I decided I really liked it. I will definitely be doing this again with different polishes.

Stripes on stripes

I've seen variations of this manicure several time and I always find it so cute so I had to try it out. It would really work with any color polishes and any striping pattern that you wanted. So fun!

Nails for the Marine Corps ball

I experimented a few times with some fancy looking nails for the ball but, ultimately, I ended up pretty simple. I knew I wanted to go with silver to match my shoes and dress. My shoes were silver glitter and my dress had silver stones on it.

I had grabbed this silver glitter polish when we were in San Diego last time. It's OPI Crown Me Already and it's great for glittery manicures.

I also did my friend's nails. Her dress was chocolate brown with gold detailing so she decided on this pretty bronze color and a gold accent nail with a tiny gold rhinestone.

Glitter tips.

I had to run to Target for something the other day and I wanted to check out eye shadow while I was there. This Milani brand polish was on the bottom of the aisle but it truly spoke to me. Especially for $2.99! I've been looking for a true big glitter in gold and silver and this fit the bill nicely. I was disappointed to not be able to find silver.

I thought this manicure was awesome. I loved the uniqueness of the big gold glittery pieces as a French in lieu of polish. I didn't end up keeping this on as I was working on something specific but it will definitely be in the rotation in the future!

More dots.

Chris and I went to have some family pictures made last week and I wanted my nails to match my outfit. I was wearing a grey sweater over a white tank top so that was my inspiration.

I did a grey base with white polka dots and I love the way this turned out. I got several compliments on it, too. I love when that happens!

Nail Inc.

I ordered this combo from Sephora a couple weeks ago when I needed to get some makeup. It was expensive so I was wary of wasting money on it. Imagine my surprise when the polish turned out awesome! I absolutely love this polish. I don't know how the top polish will look on any other brand polish but I will be trying it out.

Ulta brand.

First off, here is a shot of my current polish collection. Well, current as of the day I took that picture. I know I've bought at least two more polishes since then. I really need to figure out a good way to organize them.

I accidentally posted these two pictures backwards. Sorry about that.

I picked up the Ulta denim collection while we were in San Diego. Mainly I wanted the light blue to do a specific manicure but I couldn't pass up the five small bottles for $9.95 versus $6.00 or $7.00 for one bottle of that one color. And since I can never leave anything alone, I added a bright royal blue on top.

These are great polishes. I wasn't sure about them since I'd never tried them out before but I was very pleased. I picked up these five bottles and then four others. The regular polishes were buy one get one free. I love a good sale!

A couple of stars from the OPI Muppets Collection.

When we were in San Diego, my friend Trish asked me to paint her nails for her ball. We headed to Ulta to find some polish and they had the new OPI Muppets Collection at the front of the store. Trish and I both fell in love with the glitter!

I picked up Divine Swine which is the manicure that looks pink/purple and Trish grabbed Rainbow Connection which is a mix of glitter colors. Both polishes were awesome and I layered them both over a silver base.

Blue and white half moons.

I did this manicure before heading to San Diego for Veteran's Day weekend. I really like this blue and wanted to do something "wintery". For some reason, the blue and white together remind me of winter. Maybe next time I'll put a snowflake in the design. Even though I don't like cold at all.