It is my firmly held opinion that every holiday season needs a plaid mani. There's just something about plaid that just works so beautifully at this time of year. Interestingly, I used to do a lot more plaid designs that I do these days (should probably invest in some new plaid plates, actually...) but there's no resisting the pull towards plaid when the holidays come around. I went for a very similar design to something I did last year, but I changed up the color story and some of the details and I'm pretty much obsessed. 

Keep reading for more!

WELL. Happy Halloween, everyone! Honestly, this month has gone both incredibly fast and also felt like a bit of a marathon. My brain and my nails both desperately need a break at this point, but I'm so thrilled with how this year's raft of Halloween nails went. I didn't do quite as many as last year since I took Sunday's off this year, but 26 Halloween themed nail designs is still a LOT. So this final one is a bit of a recreation, but I love this version of it and it feels sort of right to bookend my Halloween mani's with some recreations. 

Keep reading for mor!

Keep reading for more!

I really feel like very few people would disagree if I said that there are basically 5 holiday season colors - Red, Green, Gold, Blue and White. Obviously there are other solstice adjacent holidays other than Christmas and Hanukkah but I think those tend to be the ones the sort of drive the story here in North America and as a result drive the colors that we associate with the season. Anyway, all of this is to say that I just absolutely love a really bold, festive, sparkly blue at this time of year so for this one I decided to pull out one of my long time favorite blue polishes to use during the holidays and put together this simple but quite impactful snowflake mani that's perfect for the season regardless of what you do or don't celebrate.

Keep reading for more!

Well, there you have it! This month long marathon of Halloween nail art is coming to an end and I have to tell you... it's been a bit of a rollercoaster. I have to admit that this was basically a three month long process that started with working out far more ideas that I actually ended up doing back in the summer and then I actually started doing the nail art for this Halloween season in the first week of September, alternating through periods of going hard and then taking long breaks as my inspiration and executive function waned. I also ended up with a profoundly broken nail and some family struggles towards the end of this month, so I did have to leave these last two days without nail art, but I would say that 29 Halloween themed nail designs really is nothing to sneeze at! It has been super fun and I'm so thrilled with so much of the nail art I've been able to do. 

So without further ado, let's get into my very last Halloween themed nail art design for 2022!

One of the things I did while I was putting together ideas for this year's Halloween nail art was to go back and look at designs I'd done previously. I didn't want to do a straight up recreation of any of them, but I did like the idea of doing some twists on some of my favorites. One of my absolute favorites from last year was my Spooky Grunge Voodoo Doll mani that I did and I definitely felt like I could easily take the spirit of that one and do something a little darker and more gritty with it this year. In the end... I feel pretty confident that I was able to do just that. 

Keep reading for more!

Though it wasn't necessarily my intention, today's Halloween mani went from a generally witcht inspiration to something that feels distinctly Slitherrrrrry, if you know what I mean. That being said, I'm honestly like... straight up obsessed with this mani and how it all turned out. I had sort of a loose idea of what I was going to do... something in my notes like "deep green, witchy images".. but I was so very much no prepared for how this turned out in the end. I do not like to toot my own horn, but I am just so in love with how this one turned out. 

Keep reading for more!

I have to be totally honest. After my Purple Holo Tip Gradient Spiderweb Nails, I really did think that I would leave this particular technique to the side for this spooky season, but I just couldn't resist doing a slightly different and more colorful version. I mean, really, I think I would have pretty easily been able to create at least a handful of distinctly different versions of this mani for Halloween with ease, but I definitely wanted to change it up somewhat. Maybe. I don't know. I'm pretty in love with how this one turned out though!

So keep reading for more!

Last week when I posted my Abstract Watermelon Gradient Nails, I promised that there would be more fruit to come - and here is the fruit! I've actually had this mani in mind all summer as well, or some version of it at least, but I tend to talk myself out of doing reverse stamping because it tends to feel like a lot so it took me a while to get here. In all honesty reverse stamping isn't actually as much work as I convince myself that it is and the result always seems to be worth the work you put in to get to it. 

So... let's get to the fruits, shall we?

I have to admit that this week's #CBBxManiMonday is really intensely personal for me in a way that generally I don't delve into here on the blog. Tomorrow is the one year anniversary of my brother's passing and I'm having a hard time separating the theme of allyship from that. I don't want to go too much into details about my brother and my family as those things are deeply personal and not suitable for a nail art post, but I will say that he was a member of the LGBTQ+ community and his struggles with his identity undoubtedly contributed to his passing, which is absolutely devastating. This is one of the reasons that, for me, allyship with the LGBTQ+ community is so important and why I believe so wholeheartedly in being a part of creating a safer world for people in all marginalized communities. 

Keep reading for more. 

I have to admit, today's mani has a very, very specific inspiration but also looks pretty much nothing like what it was inspired by - unsurprising to me, as I understand my brain, but might seem a little bit weird to others. I was actually inspired by a set of full cover water decals from Whats Up Nails and I would have happily done a straight recreation if I'd had a stamping image that would have worked, but the color story and the overall vibe were enough to really inspire me to create these nails and they're definitely summery and fun.

Keep reading for more!

Full disclosure - as I write this post, I'm subsisting on 3 hours of sleep and the laziest determination of life after being kept up most of the night by my dog who is very, very itchy at the moment because of her allergies. Anyway, for this week's Floral themed #CBBxManiMonday, I tried something sort of silly but I think it actually worked sort of beautifully - much more so than I was expecting, if we're being honest. I called this design "Blobby" because that is literally what it is - blobs of polish on a sheer base with some high contrast stamping. And I kind of love it!

Keep reading for more!

I have to admit that pink and red are not generally my jam when it comes to my nails. I mean... it's pretty obvious with a scroll through my Instagram that those are just not colors that I'm big into personally. Speaking of which, please do go over to @pblnails and drop a follow to keep up with all of my nail art designs as well as video tutorials for all of my manis! Anyway, because the whole pink and red thing isn't entirely my thing, I decided that for this Valentine's Day I was going to include a mani that's a little bit more vampy - with a polish that was straight up inspired by vampires, which I sort of love. 

Keep reading for more!

I feel like inspiration can be just about anywhere - and I do tend to find it in fairly random places. That being said, I wasn't really expecting to find it where I found it for this mani. Picture this - I was just scrolling through TikTok, as you do, and this video came up of a Russian woman doing a really cool painting technique on a wall using metallic paint and plaster, along with some really big mandala stencils. It was such a cool technique and looked gorgeous on the wall, but immediately my mind started percolating with how that technique could translate onto the nails. I ended up straying somewhat from what I originally intended and it was definitely a trust the process type of a situation, but I really, really love the finished product. 

Keep reading for more!

You may recall, if you saw my Amethyst Inspired Smooth Marble Mani recently, that I felt inspired to try this technique using different polishes for more of a white quartz inspired look. Admittedly, I'm having a bit of a moment with pretty rocks these days and I'm having a lot of fun playing with different ideas for how to get the look of natural stone onto my nails. For today's mani, I neutralized the color palette to almost white and added some modern abstract stamping for a little bit of interest and punch, and I am completely and totally obsessed with the final result.

Keep reading for more!

I feel like I've probably already mentioned it this month, but there's something that happens to me in January where either the inspiration or the energy is just... lacking. This past weekend both of those things were definitely true and after sitting at my desk trying to come up with something - anything - to fit with the #CBBxManiMonday Blue & Purple theme, I finally decided to just grab a polish I love and pair it with a stamping image I love and then go lay down and read. As you do. (In case you're wondering, I'm currently reading It Happened One Summer by Tessa Bailey, which I avoided for a looooong time despite rave reviews because I don't like cartoon covers. But it is a DELIGHT.)

Keep reading for more!

Admittedly, after wrapping up holiday themed nails, I was a little bit sapped of inspiration and really not sure what I wanted to put on my nails. Luckily, Christmas Eve brought me some gorgeous and exciting new polishes from NailStuff.ca**, including the base polish I used for this mani, and there was definitely some inspiration there. Because we're still recovering from a somewhat unfortunate quarantine Christmas, I kept it simple, but I think the base polish for this one needed its moment to shine anyway. 

Keep reading for more!

I will fully admit that a lot of my holiday nail art designs lean on snowflakes, but I honestly feel like snowflakes are one of the most versatile design elements for this time of year and I have no shame in finding as many different ways to use them as possible. For today's mani, I knew I wanted to do a rich plaid design and then add some contrast with white Christmasy stamping on top... and, of course, the best white wintery stamping in my opinion is definitely snowflakes, which I think really shine on top of this base. 

Keep reading for more!

When doing a marathon of 24 nail art designs in one theme, I will fully admit that there can be some creative fatigue that comes with it. When that happens, I generally have two options. The first is to push through and just try things until something sticks. Unfortunately, this is a really frustrating option and sees failure much more often than it sees success. The second option is to try something that feels sort of outside of the theme. This is how you end up with pastels at Halloween, I'd say, and in the entirely opposite direction - vampy Christmas nails, which is what I have for you today!

Keep reading for more!