Full disclosure, I do not post my holiday mani's in the order that I did them because I try to curate the feed a little bit more than that for an overall flow that my all-over-the-place brain doesn't reflect at all. Why I am telling you this? Well, this was the fifth mani that I did for this marathon of nail art and it was the first one that used sort of traditional holiday colors - and very specifically because I felt like I needed some red and green to get me fully into the holiday mood. I didn't really have a clear plan going in, but as soon as the red and green were on my nails I knew it was going to be very on the nose with the Christmas theme. 

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I love choosing red and green polishes to go together for Christmas nails - there are probably more options than there should be if you have a big enough polish collection. For this one, I knew I wanted to use Starrily's Forest of The Night, which I bought as a birthday gift for myself back in September but hadn't actually gotten around to using yet. It's a gorgeous, deep forest green créme that is just so gorgeous. For the red, I went with Color Club's Catwalk, which is a neutral primary red with a hint of depth that gives it a really beautiful richness without veering into vampy. I alternated application of these two polishes and applied two coats to each nail as my base. 

I decided to reach for the KADS Christmas 019 stamping plate because I recalled seeing a product photo that kind of hit on where I felt like this was going. To start, I knew that I wanted to tie the whole mani together and add some dimension by applying this full coverage sort of garland and bows image to all of my nails. For the rest of the design, I decided to go with some fairly straightforward reverse stamping using the reindeer and Christmas tree images from the place. They were similar in size, all told, and I felt like they really brought a cohesive vibe. I filled them in using a small dotting tool and let them dry down until they were dry to the touch but not brittle, and then used a sticky base coat to transfer them onto the nail.

Once I was happy with the design, I sealed it in with a nail art top coat and then followed with a matte top coat (that is almost empty and on its last legs, so it got a little funky in spots...) to take down the shine. And voila!

I really, really love how this turned out - and there really is no doubt that this is Christmas themed AF, is there? I understood the assignment! I feel like you really can't go wrong with some nail art over a couple of rich red and green base polishes if you want to really drive home the holiday vibe. Also, these bases are... pretty much perfect for the season, highly recommend.

Be sure to check back here on the blog for more holiday themed nail art every day in December leading up to Christmas Eve and head over to @pblnails on Instagram to check out video tutorials for all of my nail art designs!

Thanks for reading!