Manicures: Holiday edition
Anyone who knows me (or follows me on Instagram) knows I love doing my own nails. So much, in fact, that the last time the world saw my bare nails was over a decade ago. In the spirit of the holiday season, I decided to share with you chicas, five súper simple designs you can totally recreate. Rock them nails at your holiday party!
- French tips stick ons
Probably the easiest way of giving your nails a holiday splash, without over doing it or spending tons of time. For this look I used a nude color as a base and Blinged Out french tips by Avon as accents. Pretty simple: chose the size that best fits your nail, peal it off, place it on your nail tip to the desire width, press and file away the excess sticker.
If you are feeling a bit more festive you can try the Let It Snow or Totally Tartan designs- also by AVON. Any for $3 (on sale now.)
Warning: As much as I loved these french tips, don’t expect them to last- they won’t. Mine started to peel off by day two. My advice? Put them on the day of the party, show off your nails, get complemented on them..done.
- Color blocking
You can never go wrong with color blocking, simply chose two or more (just don’t over do it, you don’t want your nails to look messy or clutter) colors that complement each other and go wild. Apply your lighter color as a base, let it dry, using scotch tape cover the section you want to protect and paint with your other color, pill the tape off immediately, let it dry- done.
For this look I used Sweet Strawberry and Soft Seafom from Pixi by Petra. Now these two colors are part of the brand’s spring collection and won’t be available until March. For a holiday look I suggest Vivid Colar with Precious Petwer accents. Both can be bought at Target for $8
Why I love this brand: Pixi by Petra is a complete line of cruelty-free beauty products with amazing quality (not a formula easily found.) This particular mani lasted my usual 9 days. Don’t forget to apply top coat to protect your design.
- Starry night
As much as I love gold and red during the holiday season, they’re not everyone’s cup of tea. This mani is super cute, a bit romantic (maybe it’s just me) and again, easy to do. This look totally resembles a galaxy design I did a while back- that took me two hours! I nailed this is under 30 minutes.
I used Start to Finish Base Coat/ Top Coat/ Nail Strengthener to start and finish. Apply two coats of Peace & Love and all your nails, except for your ring finger (use Eurso Euro on this one), let it dry and apply Snow Globetrotter on as many nails as you want to create the starry night effect.
Perfect gift: Get the complete Plaid About You 5 Piece Set by Gwen Stefani for O.P.I for $32. It comes with a cutsie make up case with dividers to store your nail polishes.
- Glitters
This mani is perfect for those who hardly ever wear nail polish or feel comfortable with more simplistic designs. Nothing says girlie (and fiesta!) like glitter. For this particular look I mix two of my favorite sparks: Costume Glitters (silver) and Dress to Thrill (goldish) from Sally Hansen.
You can opt for applying the glitter over a dark tone polish (dark blue or black would work great) for a more dramatic effect.
Tip: A great way to make glitter polish easy to remove is to paint a coat or two of Elmer’s Glue as a base coat. Let the glue dry completely and paint over. To remove simply peel back the glue.
- Dotted Christmas
essie has been my to-go brand for couple of years now and it never disappoints. If you are just as crazy about Christmas as I am, you’ll love giving this easy DIY dotted mani a try. Start with your usual base coat, paint most of your nails with two coats of After Sex red, use Penny Talk metallic on your finger nail and let it dry.
For the fun design simply use a dotting tool (or bobby pin) to make some dots on your index finger.
Tip: I spend most of my time tying, so the tips of my manicured nail used to start cheeping pretty fast. To avoid this, use an extra coat of base and nail polish just in that area.
