So I’ve decided to shun the usual festive colours for this design. I thought black holly on a red/pink magnetic polish base would be an interesting twist, and a bit of a relief to the sometimes sickly traditional colours of Christmas. How do you think it turned out?
So in case anyone isn’t aware – it’s almost Christmas, yaaaaay! Tonight is my last night of work for two whole weeks and I cannot explain how good that feels, as I’m really needing a break. I decided to paint Rudolph on my nails but he has a secret…
At first he looks like a normal red nosed reindeer. (If there is such a thing)
But start to hold your phone to text or browse, and his red nose really does glow!
This is thanks to a NFC (near field communication) chip that’s embedded in a nail sticker. It’s wonderful, I’m always amazed that such technology can actually fit on my nail and works. I purchased mine from BornPrettyStore, and I’ve used them before in different colours. (Last year I used one atop a christmas tree)
Here’s a short video to help display the way the led flashes. It’s certainly bright and strong enough to see during the day too, but in the dark it gives off an amazing flash!
Have you ever worn any technology on your nails before?
So today I was out for a scrumptious lunch at a local restaurant called ‘Canada Wood Kitchen‘. It’s not large at all, maybe only 10 tables, but it’s cozy and homely and the menu is always fantastic. It’s also in the middle of no where so the view is lovely! It seems to be one of those places that people only find out about by word of mouth, I think that’s quite cool as it almost suits it’s ‘vibe’.
Anyway! I was wearing a christmas jumper consisting of a furry reindeer with a belled harness, and I have to admit that I love noisy clothes! I mean really, at what other time of the year is it acceptable to wear clothes with bells on them.(I hope we’re all in agreement that it is okay to wear bells the now though?…) So I painted my nails to match of course!
So today I tried out BornPrettyStore’s ‘Harunouta Stamping Plate L002‘, and boy is it a big one! It has over 36 images to use which is pretty darn impressive for one plate.
How good does a new plate look! Immediately, and rather obviously, the idea came to do reverse stamping with the Kokeshi doll images so that’s what I did. The plate is smooth, the etchings are clear so I had no problem picking up the images.
I had some slight smudging due to my top coat, grrr, but forgetting that the image lends itself perfectly to the reverse stamping/stamping decal technique! Next I decided to try out the blossom image. I had a little more trouble with this one, however I wasn’t sure wether it was due to the plate being new – sometimes they need a little bit of settling, or me not applying enough polish, or my stamper. However the image did pick up but can you see little sort of holes which became really obvious on my nails which was a shame. (Also, whoops at the smudged one and lack of extra pick up clean up!)
I decided to try again with the blossom image, but this time show a little versatility by creating a christmas design with a clearly not-so-christmassy plate! I again went with the reverse stamping/stamping decal technique. What do you think of my Poinsettia?
Okay, so unfortunately the holes in the blossom still happened. Anyone any ideas as to why that happens? The plate looks really well etched and the kokeshi doll picked up just fine. I mean this is under major scrutiny, at a distance where any normal person would be looking at your nails it’s barely noticeable.
There’s so many great, usable images on this plate that I could have painted tonnes of designs! I hope I’ve managed to show you a few ideas on how to use it, and possibly inspired you on how to turn non-christmas related images into something with festive cheer.
If you fancy ordering the ‘Harunouta Stamping Plate L002‘ from BornPrettyStore, use my code AZYW10 to receive 10% off all full priced items in your basket and remember – free shipping!
So I don’t feel ‘Christmassy’, even though there’s only like 4 days to go. I’ve wrapped all the presents, toured the Christmas markets, planned Christmas dinner but still – I’m just not feeling it. The weather’s been too mild and wet lately and I think it’s throwing me off, where’s the freezing cold and ice?!
Because it’s not felt ‘right’, I’ve been neglecting my Christmas nail art. I hope these glittery holly wreaths can make up for it, but I still feel like I’m trying to falsely celebrate Christmas in September or something. Annoyingly I managed to mess up my ring finger and my thumb came out the best, urgh.
So it’s still not hit me that Christmas is in 7 days… That’s not a very long time at all so I felt like I needed to crack out my Christmas themed nail art supplies before the season passes by. Tonight I chose to use some snowflake Nail Foil that I bought from BornPrettyStore. The snowflakes are quite far apart on the ribbon so I decided to cut some out, meaning I could place them how I wanted. I also added some gemstones to the middle of the snowflakes to jazz the whole thing up a bit. I think it makes for a more classy Christmas design? I’ve seen some 
So I previously had great fun using the NFC LED Nail Stickers that I bought from BornPrettyStore (one became a Satellite and the other became a diamond). So much so, I reordered again and they arrived in time for a Christmas design! But wait a minute that doesn’t look that exciting….
Until now that I’m holding my phone and whoa – the star on top of the Christmas tree lights up and the whole nail art has been transformed. Look at that thing twinkle! Huh, it’s not twinkling and you’re not content with just a blurry photo? Keep on going to see a video…
Here comes the ugly behind the scenes bit. I like to include it as I find it quite a transformation from a big, ugly, brown chip to totally acceptable in public nail art. Start off by applying the LED chip to bare nails (base coated of course). Then paint around the LED, which is the little rectangular part of it, with the base colour and the rest of your design and you’re bascially done! Just remember to top coat LOADS. I had to paint a white base for my tree as it wouldn’t have shown up well against the red but this step could be omitted depending on your design.
So I can’t tell if I’m starting to need a new camera or maybe that I need glasses. A lot of the time I can’t tell if the photos are truly out of focus or if it’s my eyes, help me! Anyway, I saw these snow-globe nails on Instagram by @hannah_nails_it and just had to recreate them. I went down a little bit of a different route by trying to include a small ‘scene’ in mine. My snowman is pretty mess but I think it’s a sweet idea, I bet someone who has gel and a UV lamp could make the globe into something spectacular!
So I have to admit that I think this is a damn pretty mani! Usually I’m not too into this sort of style but for a night out around this time of year, I think it’s perfect. I used my Konad Black (which is my new love) for stamping the filigree pattern, and then added some studs that I picked up cheap (like 99p) from a shop called ‘Home Bargains’.
It was a hard one to photograph – the gold wasn’t shining, then it was shining too much and blah blah blah, the usual problems. Trust me, it’s pretty.
P.S The winds of change are blowing in my direction, stay tuned to see where they take me.
So I think this is only my second Christmas design this year, whoops! I blame my Ciate advent calender not giving me Christmas related colours. For this I used ‘Boudoir’ (AGAIN I think it’s my fave out of the Calender so far) and Barry M for the green and gold. The marble was done by blobbing on the polishes and then swirling them about with a toothpick. Yes that technique is less messy than water marbling and it gives a different effect, but my goodness it took seriously ages for them to dry. They looked weird plain so of course I had to add something else.
WonderfulWolf 