Absent blogger returns

Hello old friends, we meet again! I have been so very busy, remodeled and sold our old home, bounced around 2 rentals and had our new home built and bought and just moved in! I foresee some new nail art coming very soon and I'm excited about it. In the meantime, here are some designs that never made the blog since my absence! You will notice I had a brief fling with at home acrylics, it was fun but I'm glad that's done and I'm back to natural:

Christmas take 5: "Have a Holly Jolly Christmas!"

For Christmas week I wanted something elegant, sparkly & simply pretty. I picked hollies. I used one of my favorite glitter polishes, can't remember the name, but it's really sparkly, has a holo effect & also changes color in UV light. It was the perfect choice & I'm really happy with the result. I now feel like my Christmas spirit is if full swing & I can proceed with the celebrations.

Here are my Holly Jolly Nails...MERRY CHRISTMAS to all & to all a Good Night!

Christmas take 4: "...walking in a Winter Wonderland!"

I got a Christmas card in & was suddenly inspired, so off with the red & on with the "winter wonderland"!

inspiration

Christmas Take 3: Oh Christmas Tree...

It's the week before Christmas, all my shopping is done, all my presents are wrapped. My brother & sister who are in the army are home for Christmas & we're going to have a wonderful time!

This week's design I was inspired by a picture I found on Pinterest, but for the life of me I can't find it anywhere today. So if you know who did this lovely design, please let me know so I can give credit where credit is due.

Anyways, it's just a simple little tree but it looks very elegant & the white contrasts so well on red.

Christmas take 2: "....and a Partridge in a Pear Tree"

Today I was trying to really get creative because I have done so many similar Christmas designs & I didn't want to be monotonous, but it still had to be Christmas-y. So I started singing carols in my head landed on the 12 Days of Christmas. I remember loving this song as a kid & settled on doing the Partridge in a Pear Tree.

Inspiration

Company Christmas Party

I did a couple of the ladies nails for our annual Christmas party!

Yesi's Snowmen

Ena's Snowflakes

Christmas take one:

As promised I am back! I am still nursing some very short nails, but then again my nails have never really been long, anyways I'm kicking off the season with a very simple Christmas plaid design. I copied 100% from this site, she did a matte version & mine is a bit more sparkly!

Inspiration

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Holly, inspired by Nailside:

I saw this lovely idea from Nailside & had to give it a go. It also gave me an excuse to go pick up OPI's Goldeneye from the James Bond collection that I'd been wanting since it came out :)

I used Goldeneye on all my nails except the ring finger, for that I used OPI Jade is the new Black as my base color & made the little "clouds" with OPI Live and let Die. Acrylic paint was used for the accented holly berries.

This is probably my last Christmas design & I'm very happy with it. I want to wish you all a very MERRY CHRISTMAS and a HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas...

...but if the white runs out, I'll drink the RED! Actually, I would probably drink the red first as I do prefer it. Anyways, this is not a white Christmas manicure, but a red one & I had just found that joke the other day on Twitter so I thought it would be funny (insert giggle here)! In any case, it did inspire this simple red & gold mani so I figured I should post it.

I used my Butter London Pillar Box Red as my base color. I then did a side swipe of this pretty gold I found a long time ago, the brand is Pastel & the color is 400, but I can't find any reference to this online so I added a picture. It kinda has the same effect as the luxeffects do, just a light gold glitter. To enhance a little better added a gold line using acrylic paint.

Outside sunlight

Indoor lighting

Add caption

Cardinals in the Snow!

Another Christmas nail design. This one I found on a site called the best fashion blog, I'm not sure who the artist is, but I fell in love with them & had to give it a go.

I used Butter London Lady Muck for my base color & used acrylics for the detail.

Currently featured as #7 in Seventeen Magazine

Christmas Movie/Nail night

It's been so long since I held one of these & what better time than Christmas! It was so much fun, I enjoyed every minute as I got to see each lady light up when their nails were done & that was my little bit of Christmas Cheer!

The Movie of choice:

Who doesn't love this movie? It's full of fun & love, the kind of movie that makes you feel warm & fuzzy & touches you at your core. (It also inspires you to try out your British accent all night, heehee!)

The following are pictures of everybody's nails, in no particular order. 

Polishes used were:

Sally Hansen "Sent me to Green Heaven"

Sally Hansen "Celeb City Silver"

Zoya "Sara"

Zoya "Blair"

Butter London "Fishwife"

Orly "Royal Navy"

Nicole by OPI "Follow me on Glitter"

Designs were created using acrylic paints & a fine nail art brush. Some pictures didn't come out as I had hoped, it was late at night & the lighting was bad, so I'm sorry. You will notice that the last pictures look much better, these were retakes the next day at the office & I could only do that with the ladies I work with. I also got creative with my snowmen, lol, so don't laugh. Overall you get the feeling of Christmas Joy!

Leslie's abstract c'mas tree

Tara's blue Christmas snow

Melissa's presents

Linda's snowflakes

My Christmas Tree

Corinne's snowflakes

Yesenia's Holly & Snowflakes.

Christmas Candle inspired by Robin Moses

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! Our Christmas tree is up, our wreaths are up & everywhere you go you can see little bits of Christmas popping up everywhere. So, what does this mean to a nail artist? OMG, lets sketch Christmas nail art patterns all over every piece of paper you can find, right? Naturally!

I've got tons of pictures for inspiration & one of those is a pretty candle that Robin Moses did a while back. Since I already had been wearing this dark green color, OPI Live & let Die, for a few days I figured it would be the perfect background for my candle! I used acrylic paints, a thin detail brush & a sponge. After creating the candles I thought the rest of my nails could use a lift, since it had already been about 3-4 days since first applying my base color, so I added one coat of Essie's luxeffects in Shine of the Times that I absolutely adore & it worked like a charm! So here's the first of many MERRY CHRISTMAS designs.