Happy Holidaze the first!

 Hello, my name is Laynie and I'm a nailartaholic.

Knowing the holidays were swiftly approaching, I sat down over the weekend to make a few nail art designs on nail tips. I figured I would do 3 or 4, maybe 5 max, so that I would be a bit ahead for the blog. Then I got carried away.

I was having fun. I was absolutely bursting with ideas, more than I could keep up with, truthfully. I jotted down some ideas on paper, so I could get to them before I forgot them. Then, I started to work.

By the time I had finished, I had 30 different looks. Like I said... I got a bit carried away. There's everything from subtle to in-your-face bling. So keep an eye out, we'll be doing lots of holiday nail art!

First up is a look I think is appropriate for everyone, no matter what winter holiday you celebrate. This nail art takes the lights from your tree, your house, or your decorations and puts them on your nails!

It's silly, it's fun, and I can't look at this one without smiling. I showed it to a friend of mine who immediately thought it was complex, so I decided to do an animated image to show you the process. It's time-consuming, but not complex at all.

You'll need to gather your supplies together before you start, so you don't wind up digging for bits halfway through with wet nails. You'll need:

• base coat
• the background polish color
• a black nail art pen (or whatever color you want the cord to be)
• striper polishes, nail art pens, or an art brush and various polish colors for the lights
• top coat to protect your art

First, put your base coat on. This is standard no matter what you do.

Next, use a nail art pen (I used my Sally Hansen Nail Art Pen in black) to draw a meandering line across my nail. I then drew shorter wiggly lines to fill in the blank spaces. These black lines will be the cord of the lights. I made sure to leave room for the various lights.

Then, use various striper polishes to paint lights around the nail, making sure the fat end of the light was against the "cord." I used red, blue, green, pink, yellow and silver. You can use whatever colors you want, as many or as few as you want.

Finally, add a coat of top coat to protect the art you just made. It really is that simple!

If you want to jazz it up, you could use individual nail art gems for the lights, or you could use various colors of glitter polish to add some sparkle to the lights. You could also do this on a different colored background- sponged greens to resemble a Christmas tree, black to resemble lights at night, or white to look like lights against snow! You could use a single meandering line that makes its way across all of your nails, or do a single nail for accent. You could even do the black line across the tip of your nail and make a french tip of lights! You're the artist, you can do whatever you like!

Happy Hannukah for those of you who celebrate, and happy Thursday for the rest of you!

EDIT: I worked up a few examples of variations in Photoshop. Hope you enjoy!

 

Some polishes were provided by the manufacturers for consideration.

See my disclosure statement for more information.