With pop art nail designs having such a moment right now, I had an inkling that I wanted to put together some Christmasy ones this month, but it wasn't until I had the Uberchic Beauty Merry & Bright Stamping Plate in hand and saw these images that just felt like the absolute perfect choice for this mani that I decided officially to do it. Since most of the pop art mani's I've seen thus far have been done in gel polish, I wasn't entirely sure how this technique would turn out using regular polish, but I was in for the experiment and I only had to do it twice to get it right. 

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For my color story, I knew that I wanted to mostly use colors that were traditionally Christmasy - red, green and gold - but I wanted them to be very warm, yellow toned versions of those colors. I ended up spending a LOT of time digging though my polish drawers to find just the right polishes to use and you'll notice from the list below that the number of nail polishes I used in this design is actually somewhat ridiculous - but I knew what I wanted and also what was required for this style of design. Along with the base polishes, for this technique you also need a darker version of that base color along with black for the outline and white for the highlight. I also wanted a little bit of variation when it came to the reverse stamped images, so it really did end up being a lot. 

NOW. To start, I applied my base polishes in a pattern. For the photos, I knew I wanted two red bases, so I did my first and pinkie fingers red. For the rest of my hand, I wanted to lean into the Christmas-y vibe, so I did my thumb and ring finger green (more green = more Christmasy, said my brain) and then this golden yellow on my middle finger.

Now for the nail art. I used a combination of a dotting tool and a couple of nail art brushes to fill in my images right on the stamper head and I let those dry down while I moved on to the pop art aspects of the base. Honestly, this is the part where gel polish would have been very, very much easier, but I think I managed to do alright considering I used regular polish. I started by outlining each nail in black and then I went in with my high and lowlight polishes, adding swipes of each in opposing directions on opposite sides of the nail. I also added a white dot at the fine tip of the highlight swipe.

Once that was dry enough to handle the stamper, I applied a thin swipe of sticky base coat at the center of the nail between those two lights to give my decals something to stick to. Normally I would cover everywhere I would be placing the decal, but I really didn't want to disrupt the nail art underneath, so I just did that swipe. After letting that sticky base coat dry down for about a minute until it was tacky, I just slapped the images on - doing my best to keep them at the center of the nail.

Now, finally, once I was happy with the design, I sealed everything in with a nail art top coat and then followed with a matte top coat to bring down that shine and really drive home the pop art vibe. And voila!

I suspect that the struggle I had with this mani definitely comes through in how I talk about it, but I do think it was worth the work in the end. That said - there is a reason that people generally do this technique with gel polish (or, I suppose, more hand painting skill than I personally possess) and if I decide to try it again I will definitely bust out my gel polishes for it.