I have to say, I'm really finding myself drawn to white bases for my nails this holiday season, but because I'm me and I generally hate working with full coverage white créme polishes, I've been going all in with sheer white polishes. For today's mani, I was actually inspired by a Christmas nail art design that I did back in 2018 - check it out here if you wanna see my beginner skills and much shorter nails - and I even reached for a couple of the same polishes to get the look that I wanted! And I'm absolutely in love with it, honestly.

Keep reading for more!

So the base for this mani is actually sort of a jelly sandwich technique but sort of not. I started with one coat of Essie Gel Couture Lace To The Altar, which is a sort of sheer white shimmer. I picked this shade because I wanted some sort of subtle glow from within in this base - subtle but there. Over that, I applied my full nail snowflake stamping in white, alternating the direction of the stamp on each nail. Over that, I carefully applied a coat of Essie Gel Couture in Picture Perfect, which is a really soft, sheer white crelly shade with a fine gold shimmer running through it. I thought about doing another layer of stamping and crelly, but I actually really liked the sheerness oft his base, so I left it there. 

I knew that I wanted to pair this base with black stamping for a really high contrast, modern look, and I loved the idea of keeping it really simple on most of my nails with just a crisp snowflake of two and then a more intricate design on my ring finger as an accent nail. I've actually wanted to use this sort of gift wrap image from the Beauty Big Bang 13 Stamping Plate since I got it last year or the year before, but I could never figure out what I wanted to do with it until this mani. 

Once I was happy with the stamping, I sealed it in with a layer of Water Based Top Coat and then followed with a quick dry glossy top coat and voila!

I swear, this holiday season is doing wonders for my feelings about sheer white bases - I have learned to absolutely love them and I think they're just perfect for the winter months. For me, the pairing of black and white doesn't necessarily scream Christmas, but I love having options that are outside of the colours that I would normally choose. And I'll be honest, I'm kind of obsessed with this mani.

Be sure to check back every day until Christmas Eve for more winter/holiday themed nail art and head over to @pblnails on Instagram to check out my nail art videos for all of these manis! If you've missed any of my 2020 Christmas Nails posts, click here to go back through them all!

Thanks for reading!