I find that when I'm thinking about holiday themed nail art, there's definitely a tendency to think inside a very small box when it comes to colour choices. Clearly there are probably a handful of colours that we all tend to associate with Christmas - Red, Green, Blue, Silver and Gold (and, I guess, white, if that counts...) and it can be really easy to live inside that box for themed nails. However, when you're doing 24 different nail art designs in a row, there's a distinct need to escape that box - at least for me. Enter: NEON! Now, as I sat down to do this mani, I really did question whether I might be an insane person for thinking it was a good idea, but I just went for it and now I'm basically OBSESSED with this design.

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So initially my plan for this mani was to just use the pink, purple and blue shades, but then I realized that I really wanted something in the green family so that I could use the Christmas Tree image in a way that I would be satisfied with, which is when this mani really became a skittle. Of course, being a neon skittle, I reached for my Color Club neon polishes and applied two coats in rainbow order (repeating the pink for my thumb, since I always tend to match my thumb to my pinkie...)

I applied two coats of each polish to my nails and let them dry down completely. 

When choosing the images that I was going to fill and reverse stamp for this mani, I knew I wanted to keep it really cute and playful, so I went with the ones that I thought really leaned into that vibe as much as possible. I chose which nail was going to pair with which image based on two criteria: it needed to bring enough contrast to pop on the base polish for that nail and it had to work in a sort of cohesive way. Again, my brain works in ways that aren't super easy to articulate, but I promise it makes sense to me. Using a combination of dotting tools and nail art brushes from NailStuff.ca**, I filled in the images directly on my stamper and let them dry down just until they were dry to the touch but still somewhat squishy. After applying a sticky base coat and letting it get tacky, I started by applying this full coverage Kawaii snowflakes image to all of my nails using a pearl white stamping polish, and then immediately transferred the reverse stamped image over that towards the center of the nail.

Once I was happy with my stamping, I sealed it all in with a smudge free top coat and then followed with a matte top coat, which I think really allows the design to shine (ironically...) And voila!

Not even going to lie, I'm obsessed with how these turned out and so, so glad that I decided to give them a go. The truth is, I a little bit tried to talk myself out of it (which is a thing I tend to do with reverse stamping in general) but I pushed through and I genuinely think that this is going to be among the designs from this holiday season that I really, really remember. So, so in love!

Be sure to check back here on the blog every day in December up until Christmas Eve for more holiday themed nail art designs and follow me over at @pblnails for video tutorials of all of the mani's I post here on the blog!

Thanks for reading!