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Take Your Nails from Grinch to Gorgeous with This Holiday Nail Art How-To

December 24th, 2010 by Karen 11 Comments

Kerry

Written by Kerry

Blogger Kerry wants to help us get our nails into the holiday spirit with a work of nail art in today’s guest post.

Happy holiday nail art

I love winter. Hot cocoa, scarves, fireplaces, snow, Christmas music and movies, and the opportunity to get away with crazy nail art. I love using glitter during the winter months — I think there’s just something special about the way it sparkles in the winter sun. Today, however, I want to show you a simple nail design that I love to rock the week before Christmas. This is an unexpected nail look that’s fun yet understated.

NOTE: The links in here are just to show you what products I used, and not to recommend the particular sites. I purchased everything shown here at Five Below, Ulta, and Walgreens.

The first step is to apply a base coat. I like using Sally Hansen’s Insta-Grip Fast Dry Base Coat, but use whatever you feel comfortable with.

Once that’s dry, apply two coats of red polish. I used ORLY’s Monroe’s Red because it’s a bright Christmas-y color. If you find that the color clashes with your skin tone, use any red that you like. For this design, though, I think it’s better to stick to creams than shimmers. Monroe’s Red does have the subtlest of subtle red shimmer, but you really can’t see it unless you get millimeters away from my nails in the sunlight.

Happy holiday nail art - bare nails

Apply a fast-drying top coat of your choice. At the moment, I’m really loving Poshé, but I’ve never tried Seche Vite, its supposed competitor.

Now for the fun part. Using white polish (I’m using a striper from Color Club), draw a line down the center of your ring fingernail.

Happy Holiday Nail Art - Step 1

Now, take your favorite black polish. Here, I used the striper from Color Club. If you don’t have a striper, no worries — just grab your fave black polish and a fine-tipped paint brush. Draw a line horizontally across the middle of your ring fingernail. Make it thicker than the striping brush itself, but not too thick. Let these two colors dry for a bit, so the next color doesn’t smear the two previous ones.

Happy Holiday Nail Art - Step 2

And, for the pièce de résistance — get out your blingiest gold polish. I chose the Milani holographic nail polish in 3D. Using a fine-tipped paint brush, draw a square around the intersection of the black and white polish. Be sure to make the top and bottom lines of the gold square directly above (and below) the black polish and the left and right gold lines directly next to the white stripe. In other words, make the center of the gold square completely black.

Repeat this process on your other ring fingernail, slap on a top coat and voila! You now have Santa’s belly on your ring fingers. Shake ‘em like a bowl full of jelly! 😉

Happy Holiday Nail Art - The Finished Look

At this point, feel free to add to your other fingernails. I’ve drawn on Santa hats, presents, and painted on some serious green and red glitter. You could, of course, keep them as is to keep the focus on Santa’s big ol’ belly. My fiancé, who normally couldn’t care less about what I have on my nails, actually thinks these are pretty cool.

Happy holidays!

Kerry

Written by Kerry

Kerry, a recent graduate with a passion for writing, editing, PR, and all things beauty, loves to test and review new beauty products almost as much as she loves to play with nail polish. Her fiancé doesn’t understand her compulsion, but if you do, hit her up on Twitter @HonestReviewer, or stop by her blog.

Take Your Nails from Grinch to Gorgeous with This Holiday Nail Art How-To / Originally published December 24th, 2010

There are 11 comments on this post. Leave yours.

Categories: Nails Keywords: guest post

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Amber says

    December 24th, 2010 at 10:32 am

    That’s a really cute idea!
    Amber recently posted … 23

    Reply
  2. lo says

    December 24th, 2010 at 10:46 am

    Love this! I also really like the Christmas lights design on your blog 🙂

    Reply
    • Kerry says

      December 24th, 2010 at 2:46 pm

      Thank you! That design is by far my favorite that I’ve done. 🙂

      Reply
  3. Nancy says

    December 24th, 2010 at 10:46 am

    Did you get this idea from julieg713 from youtube? She posted a video with a VERY similar nail design a few weeks ago….

    Reply
    • iheartmakeup says

      December 24th, 2010 at 11:53 am

      I agree..I saw the exact same thing on her channel!

      Reply
    • Kerry says

      December 24th, 2010 at 1:00 pm

      No, I actually did this and e-mailed the idea to Karen long before Julie posted that video. It’s funny you mention it — I wrote a comment on there that said something like “I just did a Santa belly like that on my nails a few weeks ago!”
      🙂

      Reply
  4. Karen B says

    December 24th, 2010 at 11:38 am

    This is so cute and subtle as well 🙂
    Karen B recently posted … Wednesday Wonderful- Sunset

    Reply
  5. gio says

    December 24th, 2010 at 11:52 am

    This is so cute, I love it!
    gio recently posted … How many coats of mascara do you usually apply

    Reply
  6. Silva says

    December 24th, 2010 at 12:22 pm

    Love it, such a cute and original idea!
    Silva recently posted … Comments Lost

    Reply
  7. Kerry says

    December 24th, 2010 at 1:03 pm

    Thanks for all the lovely comments, everyone. Glad you like it. 🙂

    Reply
  8. Stephanie says

    December 25th, 2010 at 4:23 am

    Cute.. I’ve seen this look a lot on YT
    Stephanie recently posted … Trend- Moon Manicure

    Reply

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Hi there! I’m Karen, your friendly neighborhood beauty addict, and I’m a Bay Area girl who hoards brown eyeshadow and covets coral lipstick. Every morning, I wake up and say, “I’m going to do something other than a smoky eye today.” Then…I end up doing a smoky eye anyway (most days). When I’m not putting on makeup, taking pictures of makeup or writing about makeup, which I’ve been doing daily since 2007 (!), you’ll find me hanging out with my hubby (“El Hub”), my four-year-old daughter (Connor Claire) and my torbie girl cat (Pretty Girl Rosie, a.k.a. PGR).

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