Llama Nails Holiday Challenge week 10: Christmas

Hey y'all!

First off, let me wish all of you a Merry Christmas!  I'm going to keep today's post relatively faff-free, but picture-heavy, because I kind of love this manicure for the Llama Nails challenge: Christmas.
 

I started with a base of Maybelline Black Out on all of my nails, because I wanted to save a couple of coats of polish to get good even coveragage.  Next I went in with ILNP Mutagen on my index, ring, and pinky, and then created a gradient using Essie Good as Gold.  Add a gold rhinestone and topcoat, and three nails done.  BOOM.  I knew when I swatched Mutagen the first time that it was going to come out at Christmastime.  It's such a gorgeous deep green with blue and red and orange shifts, but I get a distinctly rose gold shift in certain lights and I knew that would play well with the gradient.

I'll go ahead and apologize now for not sealing my index finger very well.  As you can see, at some point overnight, I got a chip on the tip and it looks like perhaps some other wear.  However, it appears limited to that nail, so I think I must've just not been paying attention when I topcoated.

For my middle finger and thumb, I began with two coats of Quirk Evergreen.  I am absolutely in love with this glitter polish, which is so weird for me who does not like glitter polishes.  I'm thinking there's something in the air because of the season, and come Jan 1, I'll be back to "no thanks, I enjoy removing polishes quickly, thanks."

I love the depth of Evergreen with it's varying sizes of green glitter (and those gorgeous holo hexes), but I felt like I wanted to add some more, so I layered a coat of elf Golden Goddess over it, to add some gold sparkle and also up the number of holographic glitters on my nail, because, bling.

When I got complete coverage and was satisfied with the shinies, I layered on a metric crap-ton (which is twice as much as a standard crap-ton, fyi) of SV, resulting in two hugely thick but smooth and glossy nail surfaces on which to stamp.

I used the Mo-You London Christmas 01 plate, because I might as well get as much use out of it as I can until next year, right?

I tried first stamping with the same Essie Good As Gold, but it didn't want to pick up correctly, so I switched over to my Barry M Gold Foil, which stamps beautifully.

Closeup: middle finger

Seriously, look at the glitter party going on underneath the tree pattern.  Love it!

Closeup and slightly blurred thumb: look at the shinies, capt!

I can't help being in love with this mani, even with the knowledge that it'll take a day and a half to remove.  I love it so much that it's actually on BOTH hands, if that says anything.  It might not.  You might not realize I usually only do nail art on one hand.  Sorry to burst your bubble.  Granted, it's a lot easier to do sponging and stamping on both hands, so that probably accounts for a lot.  Still.  I wouldn't do it if I wasn't happy with it.

Also of note, I opened my Christmas present a little early and took some of these pics using my new camera.  Unfortunately I still haven't got the settings on it quite right because it needs a lot more light than my camera phone, which has done most of the work for me up til this point.  I had huge problems getting macro shots to focus, so I went back and took some with the phone to cover my bases.  I think at this point I probably need to change my backdrop in my light tent to white instead of black to help spread the light around better, although I think the black looks very classy. 

I said earlier I wasn't going to faff a lot.  Obviously I lied.  Oh well.

Update on Chibi:  Got an email from Mom yesterday morning saying that he's starting to make some progress, and is eating and a lot perkier than he was over the weekend.  This is a huge relief to me, but I know we're not out of the woods yet.  My Christmas wish is that he live happily and healthily for a very long time to come.

I hope that all of your Christmas wishes are coming true.

Much love,
Ali