Falalallama

Hey space turtles! I have had a wonderful wintery day! After many busy weekends I've really enjoyed this one being a bit quieter. I've got things done (Christmas cards etc) and been for wintery walks (we're having a cold snap here in the UK at the moment) where everything was so frosty and beautiful. I also went for a very frosty lake swim which was an invigorating and sociable way to start the day. Yesterday I enjoyed taking the time to do some more Christmas nail art, the first of which I'm sharing today.

I have a cute Christmas puns stamping plate from Mo You London called Noel 10 which has lots of  cute animal images. One of the ones I haven't used yet is the llama one so I decided to base a look on that this year, accompanied with Christmas jumper prints which feels appropriate given llama's are a bit woolly. The jumper prints are from another MYL plate, Festive 04. I created a decal on my Uber Mat for the llama - it gives me Christmas party vibes! While this dried I painted by base layers of polish (ILNP's Christmas Cookie is the perfect Christmas nail art base in my opinion). I also added the wording, and the jumper prints which I stamped directly onto my nails. I then applied the llama decal and added a quick dry top coat - voila!

I love how these came out with the exception of the thumbnail which is a bit messy and the colours don't stand out very well. I'm enjoying the silliness of this look and the festive colours!

Colours used: Christmas Cookie - ILNP, Emerald Green - Barry M, Black Stamping Polish - Dance Legend, Red Velvet - Mark (Avon), Foil Effect in Silver - Barry M

Christmas Jumper Nails & 'Ugly' Nail Polish

Only three days till Christmas! It's all coming towards me very fast and I feel a bit unprepared but excited! I've got all my presents now but haven't wrapped any for those I'm seeing during the holidays. I'm lucky enough to be off from Christmas eve through to the new year but will be working on Monday. So I have kind of ended up with a backlog of Christmas nail art! I will have to do two blog posts in one day if I want to get them all out before Christmas! This is partly due to a lovely trip to Oslo we had from Saturday to Wednesday.

So for this nail art I wanted to do some Christmas jumper patterns as I have a fair few of these between my various Christmas stamping plates. I also thought it would be a perfect opportunity to try Pineapples Have Peelings Too from OPI. I remember when this first came out and I saw it in a department stores and felt... confused... it seems to be a odd mix of glitter colours to have in a gold base! Several years down the line I've seen it come up in various bloggers least favourite polish lists, and when I saw it reduced in TK Maxx I had to have it for that very reason! To be honest it's not the ugliest polish I've seen, and it has some festive fun to it, I'm kind of fond of it in a way! But it was a strange idea to put chunky glitter in metallic gold which then covers the glitter up on 2nd and 3rd layers (which it needs as the gold is thin). The colour choices are also unusual and glitter placement is quite tricky as the glitter particles are heavy in the watery base. Not what I would usually expect from OPI but it has it's own special place in my nail polish collection and it is kind of perfect for 'ugly Christmas jumper' nails. I also don't think Christmas jumpers are ugly, I think they're glorious! :D

I feel like I've waffled on a bit there, for the nails that weren't wearing Pineapples Have Peelings Too I used metallics (colours below the pictures) and white stamping polish over the top. The stamping plates used were Holiday Spirit (Christmas-01) from UberChic, and Festive 06 from Mo You London. My finger nails were just short enough to use the MYL ones and I used UberChic images on the thumbs. I was quite happy with these overall, fairly simple to do and quite fun. Also despite it's questionable formula I do think Pineapples Have Peelings Too is possibly the best name for a nail polish I've ever seen! (Giddy Kipper is a close second)
Colours used: Pineapples Have Peelings Too - OPI, Red Velvet - Mark (Avon), Emerald Green - Barry M, Primrose Park - Nails Inc

Cosy Metallic Christmas Jumper Nails

Hello nail people! Tonight I have some more Christmassy nail art to show you. Another design from a couple of weeks ago that I didn't have time to post. I ended up wearing them in Norway so I associate them with fond memories. You can see my Trondheim, Norway inspired nails here. The only thing I regret about these is that they aren't as typically Christmassy as they could be, they're perhaps better suited to the beginning of Christmas nail art season!

I used Soft Focus from ILNP's new collection as a base, and I really love it. It's subtle but also has a great holographic flare. I have some separate pictures I will share, just need to get round to swatching some of the other colours from the collection. Apart from the snowflakes on the little finger, I used some of Barry M's liquid chromes for the stamping.

I used the Festive 06 stamping plate from Mo You London. For some of the nails I created a gradient on the stamping plate, and on others I used a technique that's new to me after seeing it on Mo You's Instagram. For the index fingernail I picked up an image with the stamper in silver, and then used a dotting tool to pick up certain parts of the image. I then stamped again in purple, removing other parts of the images, and then again with gold. I love this technique and will definitely use it again! Not sure how good my description was so will make a picture tutorial too!
Colours used: Soft Focus - ILNP, Bright Lights - Barry M, Rain On Me - Barry M, Glow Crazy - Barry M, White Knight - Mo You London