So... I decided to do something that feels kind of insane at this point, but I have to admit that it's 100% driven by the fact that I know Christmas is going to be profoundly different than it's ever been in my life this year and I am genuinely sad about it. Being that there's nowhere to go these days and my brain is in... a pretty bad place, if we're being honest, sitting down at my nail desk to work on holiday themed nails has been a bit of a reprieve for me. So... instead of spreading 12 Nails Of Christmas over the course of the month, from now until Christmas Eve I'll be posting a holiday or wintery themed mani every day! 

For my first mani in this marathon, I kept it cute and cozy with a wintery cat and some snowflakes... because sometimes you just have to OD on cute, in my opinion. Keep reading to check it out!

I knew as soon as I got the idea for this mani in my head that I wanted to do a purple base. I know so many people absolutely love purple polish and since it's something that I actually don't reach for all that often, I really wanted to give it some play in this series of nail art. I actually looked through a lot of purple polishes before I settled on pairing OPI's Mariachi Makes My Day* from the Mexico City Collection with OPI Pile On The Sprinkles* from last year's Hello Kitty Holiday Collection. I'm kind of obsessed with this pairing, because the tones just work so seamlessly together to create this really textured, unique, almost indie-polish looking base. 

For the stamping, I used a selection of images from Beauty Big Bang XL-030 for this mani. I started by applying a really simple snowflake design in a pale lavender stamping polish to all but my middle finger. For my middle finger, I used the same polish but a slightly more fancy design with swirls on it to just add a little bit more interest to the middle of my hand.

For the cat, I used black stamping polish to pick it up and then filled in the face with white and the cozy sweater and toque with two different pastel neon purple shades. Like I said, I really went hard with the purple on this mani and it's basically a miracle the cat's face isn't purple too. To transfer the image to my nail, I first applied a coat of Orly Bonder and let it dry down for about a minute or so until it was tacky and then transferred it to the nail straight from my stamper.

Once I was happy with the finished result, I sealed in my stamping with a layer of water based top coat and then followed with a quick dry glossy top coat for shine and voila!

I'm really am a weird combination of excited about and overwhelmed by what I'm going to attempt over the next four weeks, but I can't wait to show you guys the mani's I've been working on! Be sure to check back every day from now until Christmas Eve for all new holiday and winter themed nails!

Also, be sure to head over to Cosmetic Proof & See The World In PINK to check out their last Whatever November themed #CBBxManiMonday nails of the month!

Thanks for reading!