CHRISTMAS NAIL ART: Cute Christmas Character Nails
So... I'm not an impulse buyer, I'm really not. I tend to really weigh whether or not I really, really want to buy something before I actually do it. But today's mani is 100% brought to you by my uncharacteristic impulse buy that was 100% based on my desire to do this mani. I'd been curious about H La Cosedora for a while now and then one morning, I was scrolling Facebook and I got an ad for their Ugly Sweater Bundle and as soon as I saw the images that I used for this mani, I just went for it. Honestly, my feelings about this purchase are a little bit mixed, but I'll get into that down below!
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If you're unfamiliar with H La Cosedora, they're a Columbian company that makes really cute acrylic stamping plates as well as stamping polishes. The company was founded by a nail artist who started out as a free hand artist and ultimately fell in love with stamping. Her plates are designed to be entirely unique - and she has a very distinct style that leans really heavily to wards cuteness - and I definitely think a lot of the designs are intended to be filled in and reverse stamped. One thing that's really great to me about the design of these acrylic plates is that they aren't clear, so you can clearly see all of the images on the plate - do appreciate this A LOT.
The kit that I picked up contained the full size Ugly Sweater Stamping Plate, 4 stamping polishes, a mini plate, a scraper, and a few other little dodads. Now, I can obviously only speak to how these specific products worked for me, but with this plate I definitely think there's a bit of a learning curve. First I found that my stamping polishes that didn't come from this brand were a little bit tricky to use with this plate, I think because they necessarily dry a little slower than regular polish, and my pickup ended up less crisp than I wanted with them because bits of it settled into the textured surface of the plate and remained tacky. Also, you are absolutely going to get the best results with this plate if you only scrape once. Because of the learning curve, I actually got really frustrated with this when I first got it and this mani almost didn't come to be, but I tried again and I love, love, love how it turned out.
What I figured out with this plate is that if I use a spectacularly pigmented traditional polish (in this case, Starrily's Vantablack*) and I only scrape once, I get a really, really gorgeous pickup. Something I recommend if you're struggling with stamping is to play around with pairings of plates, stampers and polishes because sometimes they're just not compatible. One thing that I really loved about these images once I had figured out the pickup is that they're really, really well designed for reverse stamping because the lines are fairly thick while still having good definition. The thicker lines definitely mean that you don't need quite as much precision to stay within them as you would with really delicate lines - big plus for me.
So for this mani, I started with two coats of Paint It Pretty Polish Rainbow Clouds as my base to get that really soft grey textured base that I thought would be perfect for these designs. I used a whooooole load of different polishes to fill in the images (full list below) using a NailStuff.ca Mermaid Nail Art Brush*. Once the images were dry to the touch but still a little squishy, I applied a little bit of sticky base coat and let it dry down to tacky before I transferred the image from the stamper to the nail. I also added a little white snowflake image from the plate to each of the nails as well, just to fill a little bit of that blank space left on my rather long nails. I sealed in my stamping with a layer of water based top coat and then finished with a quick dry matte top coat and voila!
All Products Used
Paint It Pretty Polish - Rainbow Clouds
Starrily - Vantablack**
Clear Jelly Stamper - 002 Jenny's Gonna Love This
Color Club - French Tip
Color Club - Catwalk
Color Club - Artsy Crafty
Color Club - New-Tral
Sinful Colors - Hot Toffee
Sinful Colors - Street Legal
Sally Hansen Insta-Dri - Pump-Kid
Orly Bonder Base Coat
Suncoat Water Based Top Coat
Quo Flash Dry Matte Top Coat
H La Cosedora Ugly Sweater Stamping Plate
Various Clear Stampers
NailStuff.ca Mermaid Nail Art Brush**
**Product gifted from NailStuff.ca - use affiliate code TRYSH for 10% off your order!
I'm still a little bit on the fence about my feelings about the H La Cosedora acrylic plates and I think I really want to try out some of the other plates as well as some of their créme stamping polishes (the ones that came with this set are metallics and very, very pretty but not what I generally reach for in this context) before I can really champion the brand. That said, this plate has done what I wanted it to do - literally, this mani right here - and one more that will be posted next week, so I'm not mad at this purchase at all.
Be sure to check back every day until Christmas Eve for more holiday/winter themed nail art. Also, follow me over at @pblnails to see all of my nail art as well as nail art video tutorials!
Thanks for reading!
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