I have to admit, today's mani was the result of an intense lack of inspiration paired with some serious struggle to get to a finished product I was happy with. Occasionally when I sit down to do my nails it'll end up being a situation where every single thing is a struggle and this was definitely one of those times. I was determined though. I had a sort of loose idea of what I wanted when I started, but I couldn't actually tell you how I got from there to where I ended up. I will admit that it's not my personal favorite, but I think it turned out good and I still wanted to share it. 

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One of my absolute favorite blue polishes in my collection is In The Deep from Heroine NYC. It's such a perfectly rich and creamy navy blue shade that packs some serious punch on the nails and has a really beautiful, easy to work with formula. It also, I think, makes a fantastic blue for Christmas nails because it has that richness that really sets off white and silvery accents. For this mani, I applied one coat of In The Deep to all of my nails except for the middle one and let that dry.

For the middle finger, I decided I wanted to add a sort of snowy, crisp white accent nail so I grabbed for one of my favorite sheer white polishes - Essie's Sheer Luck. I particularly like this polish for sandwiching glitters or flakies between because it has a fine shimmer through it that I think really adds something to that technique. For this particular sandwich I applied one coat of Sheer Luck, followed with one coat of OPI's Glitter To My Heart*, and then applied one more coat of Sheer Luck and it gave me that sheer, speckled, snowy vibe that I had been hoping for.

I decided that I wanted to use that glitter topper that I sandwiched on my middle finger for some accenting on a couple of my other fingers, but I didn't want to go full coverage. Ultimately what I ended up doing was applying some of the glitter to the end of a makeup sponge  and applying it just to the tip corners of my first and middle fingers. This worked really beautifully to add some really nice snowy texture in just one pass. For my middle finger, I knew I wanted to add some more interest so I filled in the blank space towards the base of the nail by stamping three simple snowflakes.

Once I was happy with the design (and, in this case, pretty much just ready to be done already) I sealed in the stamping with a layer of water based top coat before applying a quick dry glossy top coat to all of my nails for shine and volume. And voila!

As I said, this didn't end up being my personal favorite mani of this whole marathon of holiday naila rt, but I think that's definitely because it ended up being a bit of a struggle and it's hard to divorce myself from that. Sometimes, honestly, the simplest designs end up being the hardest to get right. Still, I wanted to share this because I think it is really beautiful and I hope it can inspired some people. 

Be sure to check back here on the blog every day in December up until Christmas Eve for more holiday themed nail art designs. Also, head over to @pblnails on Instagram for video tutorials of all of the nail art I post here on the blog!

Thanks for reading!