Christmas cracker!

Cracker being my hubby's "swear" word, I thought it very alliterative for this post's title. Because I just remembered there was a mani between the bday/Xmas one and the Xmas day mani!  It was a last-ditch effort to cram in a bunch of the Christmas manis I never got around to. So, my few-days-before-Christmas mash-up:

Kind of a crappy pic taken with my phone, but I've been forgetting since I got sick to take pics of my art! Left to right: cherry candy cane ('cause the Kleancolor metallic red bled through my white stamping), glitter globe, abstract tree, gingerbread dude on a cookie sheet (his wife was on my left hand ), and purple topped with Chunky Holo Black (which didn't even show its awesomeness here) because of the baby King!

Excuse the grody dry skin/hang nail on my thumb. I cannot seem to get rid of those! Too much mommy-ing: dishes, baths, meal prep, etc. NOT that I'm complaining. If I'd known these digits were going to become canvases, I'd have started taking better care of my hands years ago!

Christmas Day mani(s)

First up, my littlest's Xmas nails! My Kleancolor metallics and my Silly Lily (awesome!) indies arrived just before Christmas, so Kristiana asked me to cram all of them on her little digits. She was especially excited about the turquoise heart that came out of Silly Lily After the Storm onto her thumb!

And for my Christmas mani, I wanted to use the Wet 'n' Wild Shine Wild Card and Sinful Colors Call You Later that Olivia and Ian got for my birthday. I had squeezed in the polishes from Isabella and Kristiana on my birthday/Christmas mash-up, and I wanted the two big kids not to feel left out. So, a softer look for Christmas:

Here's Wild Card stamped with the squiggly tree image from BM-321 using Kleancolor metallic green in a horrendously overexposed flash pic.

Here's the rest of 'em. I used index and middle accent nails in Call You Later topped with After the Storm. This is outdoor shade, no flash.

And outdoors, sunlight.

Indoors, no flash, indirect sun.

Overall, it was a softer look than I would have preferred for Christmas (and I just love bright colors, anyway), and I think I could have gotten much better contrast for the tree stamps with my frankened special green, but I wanted sparkly trees and the color choices made O and Ian feel good, so it was worth it.

Merry Birthday!

I am SO behind on posts! The whole fam got a really nasty cold that has dragged on from a week before Christmas, and yesterday I breathed in something awful while sanding my pallets with no mask (read: idiot!). Anyway, on to the nails!

The 19th was my best friend's bday and our Christmas get-together, so I wore a birthday/Christmas mash-up for her, b/c she always checks to see what I'm wearing on my little canvases!

I won't even bother to list all the polishes it took to do these.  I will say it took me forevah, and that I should have known drawing the balloon strings below with a Sharpie would smear as soon as I top-coated. Oh well. You can't tell in this pic, but the shimmer of the orange totally glistened and shone in the water marble!!

Because of the wonky shape of my nails, the wreath I copied from here looks kind of dumb on me. I was pretty proud of my deep V French Xmas tree and my mistletoe nails!

Mani Happy Memories

Day 14: Flowers. Hmm, how to fit that into a Christmas mani? Poinsettias, of course. But I was getting a little bored with the bright red and bright green already. I was staring at my bin of green polishes, and it hit me! In the mid-80s, my family lived in Miami for 2 years. Our whole neighborhood was full of stuccoed houses with mica flakes mixed into the stucco so that all the houses sparkled. Very beachy, very...Easter eggish. Our house was mint green. I kid you not. Mint green with sparkles!  OK, there's a point, and I'm getting there! My mom found out that in Miami's sub-tropical climate, you could plant all those lovely poinsettias from coworkers, etc. right in your yard! So, out in front of our minty, glittery house was a flower bed filled with a whole row of bright red poinsettias. Hence, my flower/Christmas mani from a memory of my childhood:

I couldn't capture the glittery silver very well; my photography skills are minimal. For this mani, I used Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Mint Sorbet topped with a nameless silver glitter from The Supply Source. I used acrylic paints to make the poinsettias and leaves (although technically the "flowers" are leaves!) and for the centers I dotted on Supply Source's gold glitter polish with a homemade dotting tool. I really like how this turned out!

Xmas polka dots

Day 11 of the 31 Day Challenge (which I am stretching to about a hundred days...) is polka dots. I was pretty happy with my results for this one! I still need to practice my dot gradient, but since this was my first try, I'm OK w/ it. I used Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Red Carpet as my base color, and dotted on  Pure Ice Free Spirit and Finger Paints Well-Cultured Pearl (jacked up w/ some extra Glow powder from Sheer Miracle) with dotting tools I made by pushing ball-headed straight pins of different sizes into the eraser end of a few pencils.

Merry merry!