Gettin' Festive: Holiday Nails!

Since I'm not going home to Massachusetts this year for Christmas, I am really trying to make our home an acceptable place to spend the holiday season by decorating a bit. I've added a few decorative touches here and there around our apartment, and we put up our little Christmas tree last night (I'll post a blog with all of that good stuff soon) - but I obviously needed a way to celebrate the season on my fingernails as well, because that's what grown ups do.

After my enormous Argyle nail fail, I thought maybe I should take it a little easier in the nail designing department and stop trying to act like I am the Martha Stewart of nail polish. So rather than try to paint the Sistine Chapel on my nails or butcher any more bobby pins, I decided to just use some pretty, seasonal colors and use a toothpick to add some dots. Here's what I finished with - and I snapped a few pictures before I could ruin it:

Colors used:

.  a list by essie  .

.  ruby jewels by milani  .

.  big spender by nina  .

.  snow me white by sinful colors  .

Ruby Jewels by Milani is one of my favorite holiday time nail polishes. It's aptly named because it makes me think of Dorothy's ruby slippers when I look at it. It needs 2-3 coats at least though - otherwise it's pretty sheer. I only used 2 coats (it's on my pinky and pointer nails in the above pictures) and I wish I'd used a third to make it really opaque. See how sparkly it is though?! Milani is a very inexpensive brand for nail polishes, too, soooo..... get some. 

Also of note is that Nina's Ultra Pro nail polishes (or at least the one I have here) have awesome brushes for my particular nail shape. I have pretty short/square-shaped nails - as I've illustrated in the below diagram:

The Nina brush is also more short and square than a regular nail polish brush...

vs

... so I can paint my entire nail in just two strokes and I don't get any paint on my skin - which you may or may not have noticed is a real problem for me.

Using a toothpick for the white dots on my thumbnails and middle fingers was super easy, even with my non-dominant hand. Just put a little dollop of your nail polish on a piece of scrap paper and dip the tip of the toothpick in it, and then dot it onto your nails! Pretty self-explanatory I suppose, but I JUST DON'T WANT YOU TO BE FRIGHTENED. IT'S REALLY SUPER EASY. 

I put a top coat on all of my nails before I put the white dots on, and did not cover the white dots in a top coat at all - only because I was afraid the white paint wouldn't be totally dry and I'd end up streaking the dots all over the red nails. 

Stay tuned for probably one or two more holiday nail blogs, as wellllll as my blog about making our home Christmas cheery.

CHEERS!