Christmas Nails!

I'm really terrible at doing themed nails, only because when I paint my nails I'm not usually thinking about it!  But this year, I tried to do some Christmas-y nails, if only because anything sparkly reminds me of Christmas.  It works out in my brain.  Anyway, this post is of all the nails I did around Christmas time (so be prepared for many pictures!).

 1.

I was seeing a lot of different tree ideas around Instagram, but I don't have a steady hand for painting fun designs, so I decided to just stick some glitter on some sparkle polish and call it a day!

The "sparkle polish" in question is Ciate All Aglow, from a holiday set of minis (a separate post will be up about the rest once I wear them all) my lovely boyfriend, Ray, got me.  It is made of gold and copper glitters which remind me of candle light.  This is three coats with nothing underneath except a base coat.

Do you think there are too many sparkles?  (Is that a real question?)

Here is a nice close up!  I used a tooth pick and a dab of top coat to stick the glitters on (which I bought from Born Pretty Store).

2.

I'd like to congratulate myself for attempting candy cane stripes with loose glitter.  Like I said before, I do not have a steady hand when painting details on my nails, so I tried to do some really fancy stuff here.  It, um, didn't work out all that greatly, but I still liked it.  Mostly.

The glitters kept getting stuck on to the toothpick when I was placing them.  My pinky came out okay, but the rest were just a cluster-fudge of glitter.

At least it was shiny!

 3.

I saw this lovely Color Club polish (called Platinum Record) at Bed, Bath and Beyond while Christmas shopping and I couldn't resist.

I mean, look at it!  There's multi-sized silver hexes as well as tiny black ones.  It was like a disco ball on my finger tips.

The only problem I had was that I had to dab it on thickly, rather than paint it on to my nail.  This is three coats with nothing underneath.

Here is a close up.  As you can see, it's pretty thickly layered and a little gloopy.  But it was smooth with top coat.

I put a coat of this Fresh Paint matte top coat over it, which definitely dulled down the shine, while still leaving the polish fun to look at.  This is my first experience with a matte top coat, but I wasn't sure how many coats you are supposed to put on to make it truly matte.  I did two here, I think.

 4.

This is Seche Clink, Sparkle, Kiss.  I never knew Seche made nail color, so when I saw this at Ulta I really wanted to try it out.

It's like a ton of little gold foils that shine from pinkish to gold to kind of silver with the turn of the hand.  And then there are red glitters!

This was two, semi-thin coats.

I tried to use the light at different angles to get all of the different colors.  Here you can kind of see the silvery aspect of it.

My only qualm was that it didn't last long.  I painted my nails, and they had chipped just hours later.  This could be because I was working, but it was still a little disappointing.  I still really liked it though.

Here's a close up -- look at all that shimmery goodness!

So, there you have it, my attempts at Christmas-y nails.  I'm not the most artistic when it comes to nail art, but I like to give it a try anyway!  Also, if you are interested, I made an Instagram solely for nail-related posts.  :D