Hey, would you look at that, actual nail art! I’ve been going all hot and heavy lately with the swatches; I had started to wonder if I could still actually put detail brush to nail. Apparently I can! Three cheers for me and my featureless gingerbread man, who apparently has no defining characteristics but for his gumdrop buttons, poor sod.
I suspect there will be a lot of people hitting the holiday party circuit this week, myself included – I’m attending a high school reunion dinner with some ladies I’ve known for over 20 years, and then of course there’s the big show on Thursday (I’m more of a Christmas Eve kind of person than Christmas Day; the promise is always so much sweeter than the actual day itself.)
But no matter the event, we all need pretty nails, so why not consider a festive manicure using this delightful polish, Zoya’s Pixie Dust in Oswin? Textured polishes were all the rage some years ago, and I think people got a bit burnt out on them – speaking from a nail art perspective at least, there’s only so much you can do with a textured polish, plus they can be quite destructive to delicate hosiery.
So they faded from fashion for a bit, but there are still plenty of terrific textured polishes out there, and Oswin is one of them. Released as part of the Pixie Dust Collection in 2014, Oswin is a rich raspberry red studded with red hex glitter. Textured polishes with glitter can sometimes present as a bit lumpy, but Oswin dries down to that true, almost dry-looking textured finish with the glitter just peeking out not-too obnoxiously, and is no snaggier than a fine grade of sandpaper. Perfect for that party, or just about any other time this holiday season.
Putting just a little sparkle on the simple red Starbucks cup with two more Whimsies, green-and-gold There’s No Place Like Home over Starbucks Holiday Cup. Something Starbucks should look into next year, perhaps? 😉
Holiday sweater prints, in Valentine’s Day colours.
Say, six tree-centric manicures in a month? Because I’m averaging five, and that doesn’t seem excessive AT ALL. But I love holiday-hued glitters, and I apparently also love green polishes – betwixt the two, you will always find your nails most closely resembling a Christmas tree.
Working from top to bottom, we first have KB Shimmer’s moss green holiday polish, All Decked Out.
Next up we have another KB Shimmer polish, this time sELFie, a megawatt micro glitter that looks like crushed up ornaments for your nails.
Third time’s a charm with Colors by Llarowe’s grass green Gemini Rising topped with Whimsical Ideas by Pam’s Festivus glitter topper (Festivus itself involving an altogether different kind of “tree.”)
Next we have an ode to artificial holiday greenery in the form of Smitten Polish’s nuclear green Not Your Mama’s Easter Grass topped with my all time favourite polish, Candy Lacquer’s Candy Cane Fiesta.
And finally, we have a holiday mani for the Disney fan, a combination of Pure Ice’s Lucky Charming topped with Sally Hansen’s Over the Rainblue and another Whimsical polish, All Ears.
Actually, I don’t go in for that Elf on the Shelf business. If some mischief-making little gnome wants to bugger around my house after hours, the least he can do is leave the fun decorating stuff to me and instead run a couple of loads of laundry and maybe clean the litter box. Jerk.
Selfies are also pretty awful. But then again, I am an Old and I still don’t understand what “on fleek” means.
But! This super fun, wonderfully festive polish, KB Shimmer’s sELFie, is, trendy name notwithstanding, AWESOME. Every year I quite optimistically purchase a can’t-be-mistaken-for-any-other-season-but-Christmas polish (your basic tree in a bottle) and every year I’m disappointed. KB’s offering from last year’s holiday collection was dark and murky, the total antithesis of a bright and shiny Christmas tree, and the less we say about the polish I used in one of my ugliest – and most popular – manicures, the better.
But KB’s hit it out of the park with sELFie, a beautiful – and beautifully made – green holographic glitter sprinkled with red, blue, purple and gold hexes. It is SO Christmas – like you’re painting your nails with crushed ornaments. Which, were this any other all-glitter polish, is exactly how application would go – Snag City. But sELFie is that rare polish that is the absolute perfect mix of base and glitter, applying smoothly and evenly. You could certainly use this lacquer as a one-coat glitter topper over a favourite festive polish, but I got it to full, glorious opacity in two and a smidge coats (two regular coats and a bit of touching up, mostly right at the tips of my nails.)
Oddly enough, I don’t tend to wear a lot of nail polish in my day to day life, but I know sELFie is going to be getting a lot of play on my fingertips this season – it’s the perfect holiday mani! As always, if you also find this polish divine, you can find it and its collection mates at both KB Shimmer and Harlow & Co.
…not one iota like Christmas, because around my neck of the global woods at least, the snow has held off…thus far (so many ominous ellipses in this post!) I, of course, have now damned my city to an immediate ice storm (which is no joke; the last one we had, in 1996, knocked out half the city’s power for a week. It was actually sort of frightening.)
But snow or no snow (honestly, the snow can remain a no-go; I ain’t afraid of no green Christmas) it would seem the holiday season is now well and truly upon us, and as always, I need a matching manicure. Here I layered what I think is my favourite polish, period, Candy Lacquer’s Candy Cane Fiesta, over what’s actually an Easter polish, Smitten Polish’s Not Your Mama’s Easter Grass, for a fun and festive look that saw me through two-thirds of the decoration of my tree, before I ran out of lights. And patience. And bourbon.
I’d also like to apologize for the crappy and chappy state of my mitts. I am most allergic to my dusty, 12-year-old tree; I combat the itch only through repeated hand-washings. Really, I think I went through about half a bottle of hand soap today alone.
I suspect there are quite a few people who use the day after Thanksgiving to dig out their holiday decorations and double down on this Christmas business in earnest. I’m not even American and I’ve got the big time jones to haul my dusty artificial tree out of storage and commence my yearly mini lighting-induced breakdown.
And what better nail adornment to be sporting for the occasion than another KB Shimmer polish, this time Deck the Halls, a moss green jelly studded with rainbow hex glitter and tiny gold stars? It’s Christmas tree in a bottle, and the perfect finishing touch if you want your nails to be as pretty as your holiday tablescape.
I purchased this polish last year, and much like the mossy green colour of the jelly base, it’s one I’ve had to let grow on me. I adore jelly-based glitters, but I find they work best in crisp, clear colours that let the (typically) holographic glitter shine through the shimmery depths. Dark jellies, like this blackened green, dull that shine considerably, and tinge anything gold (like All Decked Out’s gorgeous little stars) a burnished, muddy hue.
So I wasn’t a big fan last year. And while I can’t say that my feelings towards All Decked Out have changed all that much this year, I’m warming to its Christmas tree realness – I like to see a tree-inspired polish in an actual shade of tree as opposed to, say, the more common (and plastic) electric neon green.
This manicure is sweet as candy, and scented like it, too – the red and white glitter topper I layered over a sugary pink gradient, KB Shimmer’s Candy Cane Crush, smells like peppermint! Sweeeeeeeeet.
I’m generally opposed to evoking the holidays any earlier than Thanksgiving, but seeing as I’m Canadian and our Thanksgiving was over a month ago, this merry Mickey mani is fair game. And it’s even fairer game given that Disney has had the parks decorated for the season since the beginning of the month. I’ve never visited during the holiday season, but with a non-stop parade of fun, festive activities and attractions – sometimes actual parades! – including Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party, I hear it’s a circus.
For this merry mani, I spruced up two coats of Pure Ice’s gold-tinged green, Lucky Charming, with one light coat of Sally Hansen’s Complete Salon Manicure in Over the Rainblue, a blue hex and silver bar glitter-stuffed topper, and one slightly heavier coat of Whimsical Ideas by Pam’s All Ears, a red, white and yellow glitter speckled with matte black Mickey heads. The resulting manicure is like the aftermath of a parade during Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party. Hopefully one day very soon I’ll get to experience it for myself, and I definitely know the manicure I’ll be sporting when I do. 🙂
Finger Candy 