Ever since I started doing Christmas nail art, back when I was just getting into nails and really had no idea what I was doing, I've loved sweater nails and I've done at least one or two versions of them every single year. This year, I will admit that the two I've done are a little bit more samey than I maybe intended, but I've found my favorite Fair Isle sweater style stamping image and nothing compares so it's the one I reach for. For today's mani, I changed it up a little bit from the Monochrome Green Fair Isle Sweater Nails from a couple of weeks ago, and I love love love how it turned out. 

Keep reading for more!

Initially this idea actually came from me really wanting to reach for the green and blue Starrily polishes that I ended up using in this mani and I went from there. I decided to go for a sort of jewel toned rainbow gradient skittle man using green, blue, purple and pink all in really rich, saturated tones. (Full disclosure, I didn't do my thumb for this one because it was specifically for the blog, but if you want to recreate this mani I would recommend applying a really bold red to the thumb.) I applied 1-2 coats of each - some of these polishes are SUPER pigmented - and let them dry down. I was going to leave it there, but ultimately I decided that I wanted to add a flakie topper for some glow to the overall design, so I grabbed my Holo Taco Solar Unicorn Skin and applied one layer of that to all of my nails as well.

For the stamping, I kept it really, really simple. This image, in my opinion, is just perfect for a single image mani. It's intricate and delicate but still has some punch to it, and I feel like it sits really nicely on the nail. It's hard to explain why this is a cut above all of the other sweater images in my collection, but it really is. Initially my plan was to do my stamping in white, but in the end I decided that I wanted a little bit less contrast than that so that it wasn't so stark and had a little bit more of a cozy vibe, so I ended up going with this soft taupey grey shade. I kept it simple and applied the image in the same direction with the same placement to all of my nails.

Once I was happy with the stamping, I sealed it in with a nail art top coat and then followed with a generous layer of quick dry glossy top coat for shine and volume. And voila!

I feel like this rich, jewel toned skittle base is to Winter what a pastel skittle base is to Summer. It just always works - at least for me. Also, if you're looking for the perfect fair isle sweater stamping image and you don't have the Whats Up Nails B022 Winter Time Stamping Plate, I highly, highly recommend picking it up for your collection. This image just never steers me wrong and I love it so much!

Only one more day!! In case you haven't seen them, I've been posting holiday themed mani's here on the blog as well as over on @pblnails every day in December and I'm going to be wrapping it up with my last mani tomorrow. Click here to check out all of the holiday mani's I did this year and be sure to head over to @pblnails for video tutorials for all of them!

Thanks for reading!