Bauble Bounty

Another Christmas, another festive nail art. This year, I felt a strong pull towards red which I ordinarily never wear. I've recently enjoyed sporting both OPI The Impossible from the first Mariah Carey collection and OPI The Spy Who Loved Me from the James Bond Skyfall collection, which I purchased as part of The Bondettes Mini Nail Lacquers set. I came across these Christmas nail designs from Amy and was particularly drawn to the Christmas tree. I've attempted my own take on it, of course with ridiculous amounts of bling.

To achieve my look, I first started with a base of OPI The Spy Who Loved Me, a bright, juicy red with subtle gold shimmer. I then stuck two pieces of sticky tape diagonally to either side of the nail to create a triangle shape in the middle. Inside that area outlined by the sticky tape, I painted Sinful Colors Envy (960) to form my tree. After two coats of the dark green polish, I carefully and slowly peeled off the sticky tape to reveal clean, straight edges for the tree. I then painted a small dot at the apex of the tree (right in the middle just below the the tip of my nail) with the spectacular OPI GoldenEye to make my star.

Next comes the labour-intensive, patience-testing part of 'decorating' the tree. Essentially I used two glitter polishes in a clear base, OPI The Living Daylights and OPI Polka.com, and fished out the glitter pieces in each with a toothpick. I then dotted them onto the green section of the nail as evenly as possible to mimic the look of shiny baubles hung from the tree. I probably was a touch overenthusiastic with the glitter and ended up with a higher density of glitter than ideal, in effect obscuring much of the green background of the tree. But whatever, it's Christmas. Excess is all part and parcel of the holiday season.

As if that wasn't enough razzle dazzle, I then painted a layer of the gold flake topper Essie As Gold As It Gets for that extra touch of luxe. To finish, I applied a generous coat of my favourite top coat ever, Sally Hansen Insta-Dri, to smooth things over, lock everything in place and impart an ultra-glossy finish.

I normally don't go for anything this elaborate but I figured when else but Christmas. I've received numerous compliments (from girls) and some teasing for evidently having too much time on my hands (from a guy). As I mentioned last year, my family isn't big on Christmas and we've certainly never had a Christmas tree in our home, so I'll have to be content with these ones on my nails. Hope you all have a lovely Christmas with your nearest and dearest!