Merry Christmas!

Hey y'all!

Merry Christmas!  I hope today brings each of you warm, full bellies and warm, full hearts, and maybe a few consumer goods you've been eyeing!  I don't have any new nail art to show you today, but I wanted to send you my best wishes and give you a whole page of exciting nail art from other artists to look at!

12DOC: Freestyle Christmas Tartan Plaid

Hey y'all!

Today is an exciting day for two reasons!  First, it is the final prompt for the 12 Days of Christmas challenge which has consumed this month's blogging activity for me, and the second reason is a fairly big blogging milestone.  This is my 300th post!  Who would've thought when I started this journey just over a year ago that I'd have logged 300 entries into this blog?  It's very bizarre for me.  In any event, today's final prompt for this challenge is Freestyle, leaving it completely open to each artist's interpretation.  I took inspiration from another artist's design for the Red and Green prompt and while my attempt is nowhere near as sophisticated or chic as Natasja's of Love Life Lacquer, here are my Christmas tartan/plaid nails!

12DOC: Presents!

Hey y'all!

Happy first day of winter (officially)!  Seems a bit bizarre, given that I've been wearing a uniform of sweatshirts, long pants, and socks for months now, but I'm still a Texas girl at heart and it's bizarre that my flip-flops were retired for the year in October.  Today marks the penultimate prompt for the 12 Days of Christmas nail art challenge!  It's also the final assigned prompt, because Tuesday's prompt will be freestyle and open to all the artists' interpretations.  I find this prompt particularly appropriate though, because it involves something that I still haven't done and need to do quickly - wrapping presents!

12DOC: Ugly Sweater Nails

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Happy Friday!  We've had a lovely past couple of days, as some heavy rains brought a bit warmer weather and I was actually able to leave the house in flats and no jacket!  Extraordinary!  I don't expect it to last, but I definitely enjoyed it while I could.  It's that time of the year when people pull out their Christmas sweaters (jumpers) and even go to parties dedicated to wearing the ugliest you can find.  In this spirit, today's prompt for the 12 Days of Christmas challenge is Ugly Sweater Nails, and I had to dig out my flocking powder to create some for you!

12DOC: Silver Bells Glitter Gradient

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Happy Wednesday!  Can you believe that in just ONE WEEK it'll be Christmas Eve?  Insanity!  I am truly sorry if you're still jostling around trying to get preparations made.  Thankfully, I've been able to stay on top of it all and am left with the luxury of enjoying all the decorations and fast-forwarding through the commercials because we only ever watch stuff on the DVR these days.  Speaking of decorations, I showed you some on Monday, and today I've taken the 12DOC Glitter prompt and turned it into decorations as well, sort of.  Here is my silver bells purple glitter gradient look.

12DOC: Christmas Decorations

Hey y'all!

Yup, it's Monday, again, and we're now halfway through December.  By now, neighborhoods should be filled with creative and festive light-up displays at dusk, where enterprising homeowners compete with one another for the most Christmas-y lawn display of the street.  This was the inspiration I used to complete today's 12 Days of Christmas prompt: Christmas Decorations.

12DOC: Red and Green Candy Canes

Hey y'all!

We are now in the final half of the 12 Days of Christmas Nail Art Challenge, and today's prompt is Red and Green colors.  I took inspiration from the colorful Christmas candy canes (and two of Barry M's Winter Silk shades) to create this striped design.

12DOC: Tenth Time Lord Leaping!

Hey y'all!

So, on Tuesday I geeked out a little bit with my prompt for the 12 Days of Christmas nail art challenge.  Today, I'm geeking out a considerable amount more, and I'm also trying a new-to-me technique, creating home-made water decals.  Our challenge was to pick one day from the 12 Days of Christmas song and use that as our prompt.  After hemming and hawing for a few hours, I finally decided to give in and go with my gut, and completely twist the challenge to fit my geek needs.  Ergo, I present to you the 10th Doctor (Time Lord), leaping across my nails!

12DOC: Hoth Camo!

Hey y'all!

Hold onto your seats for a minute... because my nail art for today's 12 Days of Christmas prompt contains 0% nail charms!  Are you so excited??  I totally am.  Today the Challenge Your Nail Art group is tackling the colors Icy Blue and White, so I decided I wanted to go Tauntaun hunting on Hoth, and was gonna need some camo!

12DOC: Santa!

Hey y'all!

Happy Sunday!  We've officially put the first week of December in the bag, and as such, today's prompt for the Challenge Your Nail Art 12 Days of Christmas Challenge should bring a few very familiar faces to you, because today we're doing Santa and/or Elves!  I know you'll be shocked by this, but I have *another* nail charm for this prompt!

12DOC: Snowmen

Hey y'all!

Happy Friday!  Can you believe we've already made it through the first week of December, and Christmas is only 3 weeks away?  Sometimes it feels like the first half of the year drags on and takes forever, then as soon as September hits, everything whizzes past!  Marching right along in the 12 Days of Christmas challenge is today's prompt: Snowmen, so I turned once again to that trusty pack of nail charms I bought at Poundland, and added some freehand nail art to flesh out my look.

12DOC: Christmas Trees

Hey y'all!

I'm back with the second prompt for the 12 Days of Christmas challenge, and today we're covering Christmas trees!

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!

Fall-ing for Nail Art: Traditional Thanksgiving

Hey y'all!

Happy Thanksgiving!  To my US readers, I hope you're all stuffed to the gills with yummy food and in the company of loved ones.  At the very least, I hope each and everyone one of you can find something for which to be thankful, and that goes for all of you, regardless of your national origin or geographic location.  Today's final prompt in the Fall-ing for Nail Art challenge is Traditional Thanksgiving images, and I bounced back on forth for this prompt for several days, trying to find something that wasn't too cliched or that hasn't been seen a million times already.  I've got a very untraditional take on traditional images, and it was inspired by my shopping trip today where I was really overloaded with all the Christmas decorations and sales going up in November.  It seems to happen earlier and earlier with each passing year, and here in the UK I was actually seeing Christmas sales going up before Halloween!

Christmas Puke

Hey y'all!

Today I have a funny little mani fail to show you that I like to call Christmas Baubles, aka Christmas Puke.  Originally I had thought I would capture the effect of all the bits and bobs on a Christmas tree cascading down my nails.  In reality, it just looked awful, but it tickles me so I thought I'd show you.
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CNTCWC D7: Winter Characters

Hey y'all!

Hope everyone had a lovely Christmas, whether you celebrate the day or not!  Today is called Boxing Day in the UK (and assorted Commonwealth countries), where tradesmen and people in service positions traditionally receive a box of gifts or money from their bosses.  I still like to think it's called Boxing Day because that's when you clean up all the boxes and wrapping paper from Christmas presents, though.  It's kind of weird having the day after Christmas be a holiday, whereas in the States we celebrate Christmas Eve instead, but I guess either way it's two days for Christmas.  Today we've come to the penultimate challenge of the CNTCWC today, and our theme is Winter Characters.

I wanted to do a non-traditional take on the theme (I can hear you gasping in shock already) so I played around with ideas for a while and something about the thought of Santa's view of his reindeer as they were returning to the North Pole after Christmas struck me as cute, so today, you get REINDEER BUTTS!

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.
 

CNTCWC D6: Christmas Food

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Christmas week is finally here, and last night, we finally got a bit of snow that stuck around til morning.  Of course it has all melted now by the afternoon, but it's something, right?  Today's theme in the CNTCWC is Christmas Food, which has already been on my mind as we get preparations done for Christmas day. I toyed with several ideas for what constituted Christmas food, but the one that *always* makes me think Christmas and nothing else is gingerbread houses, so that was the inspiration for today's manicure.

CNTCWC D5: Christmas Toys

Hey y'all!

I made a few changes yesterday to my blog content, including the new banner up top (whee!) and I've changed my watermarking system for future pics.  Please do leave me some feedback, if you have any, because I'm curious to know what y'all think.  For today's theme, I did some experimenting with watercolor paints.  Granted, it probably wasn't the best idea to experiment during a nail art challenge, but there you have it.  The theme is Toys, and the scenario that played out in my head was that Santa got disoriented in a blizzard and crashed his sleigh, spilling his sack and all the toys and presents inside.

CNTCWC D4: Christmas Traditions

Hey y'all!

Today's theme in the CNTCWC is Christmas Traditions.  When I was a kid, of course, we had a few traditions around the house, mostly involving decorations and the like.  I think my favorite part of Christmas was in our stockings, Mom would always give us an orange, a few chocolates, and a LifeSavers Story Book.  For my non-American readers, LifeSavers are are little ring-shaped hard candies and mints that come in a foil-wrapped roll of about a dozen or so.  At Christmas time, they would bundle several different flavored rolls (including my favorite, butterscotch) together in a box that opened like a book and was filled with different Christmas images.  I'm not sure why that was my favorite stocking stuffer, but I always looked forward to that being in my stocking each year.

As I've grown and since I have no children of my own, Christmas has taken a back burner for me.  It all seems far too commercial and hectic and ugly, and I haven't put up a tree in probably 15 years.  The past several years I've spent Christmas dog- and house-sitting for Mom so she could go visit family who couldn't let us bring our dogs, and I was okay with the arrangement because I just haven't "felt it" for so very long.  Today's theme gave me an opportunity to really play around and have some fun with Christmas traditions, so I've opted to show off two of the less-popular traditions that a lot of people struggle with every year - untangling Christmas lights and dealing with kitty cats in Christmas trees.  Most of the polishes and the stamping plate in this mani were in The Pink PrincessZ's giveaway I won and posted about in my Giveaway Mania post.