12DOC: Snowflakes

Hey y'all!

Happy 1st of December!  We're on the countdown now to Christmas and New Years, and that means a LOT of seasonal nail art from all of your favorite nail artists.  It seems like we only just finished last month's Challenge Your Nail Art series, and here we are starting a new series today.  For the next 3 weeks, we're going to be visiting the Twelve Days of Christmas, with prompts every other day.  Since this schedule runs roughshod over my usual M-W-F-S posting schedule, I'm going to abandon my normal schedule and hold off swatch posts (with one important exception this weekend), so that I can get all this nail art done and still have time to get my Christmas stuff in gear.  All that said, let's get into this challenge!  Our first prompt is Snowflakes!

This sparkly blue-toned look has a LOT of elements to it, so I'll break it down because it was fairly simple to create, all things considered.  I began with sponged gradients on all my nails.  On my middle and ring finger, I have three OPI Liquid Sand polishes; from cuticle to free edge, they are Get Your Number, Tiffany Case, and Solitaire.  On all other nails, the gradient consists of OPI Incognito in Sausalito, China Glaze First Mate, and MoYou Nails Light Blue.  On my thumb and index finger, I topped that with a coat of INM Northern Lights Silver, and on my pinky I've used a coat of Nina Sapphired Up.

Once my gradients were dry, I topped the two textured nails with a coat of Gelous and attached these 3D snowflake charms, which I got in a set of 12 from Poundland.  After those were attached, it was time to get stamping!  I added a variety of different snowflake images from Cici & Sisi 04, QA57, and QA19, and tried to add a little dimension by using different stamping colors.  Most of the smallest flakes are in Konad White, the slightly larger ones are in Barry M Huckleberry, the medium ones are George Blue Lagoon, and the largest ones are Barry M Silver Foil.  When I was done with the stamping, I topped those nails off with a coat of NYC Matte Me Crazy.

I know that sounds exhausting but it actually went really quickly.  My only word of advice if you want to try a similar look is that any time you're trying to make a textured gradient, or a glitter gradient, do take the time to tape or glue your cuticle areas, because it will make cleanup SO much faster and easier. 

If you love snowflakes and want to see more, be sure to check out the inlinkz below for the other 12DOC Snowflake looks!

An InLinkz Link-up

Hope you're all starting the month off right, and that you survived the Black Friday craziness.  Take care and I'll see ya Wednesday!