CHRISTMAS NAIL ART: Cute Little Frosty Penguin Nails

by - December 21, 2021


I've noticed a bit of a weird thing that my brain does as I've been going through this marathon of Christmas nail art. It's really not surprising, I'm pretty neurodivergent and my brain works in a pretty specific ways, but it hadn't really occurred to me. Logically I know that I like doing reverse stamped nail designs and they're always worth the work, but I tend to talk myself out of them and convince myself that they're hard and way too much work and overwhelming. I had to push through that for the Cute & Cozy Hot Cocoa & Coffee Nails that I posted earlier this month using this same stamping plate and I had to do it again for this one - and it was so very much worth it both times!

Keep reading for more!


Much like the other mani that I mentioned above, choosing the base polish for this design was a bit of a process. I knew (well, I mostly knew, anyway....) that I wanted to use a shade of blue that was going to be frosty and cool since that was really the vibe I was going for with this design, but I actually tried a few options before landing on the one I used. Quo's Peek-A-Blue has been in my collection for a while and I managed to convince myself that I wouldn't like the formula, but I grabbed for it anyway and I'm SO glad that I did. It's this beautiful cool blue cream with this really delicate silver shimmer through it that really amps up that frosty vibe and it turns out that the formula is really lovely.

For this mani, I applied three thin coats of Peek-A-Blue to all of my nails and let them dry down completely while I worked on the reverse stamping.


For this mani I knew that I wanted to use this full coverage image for my middle finger and then single penguin images for the rest of my nails - it's a bit of a thing for me at this point, I think. I ended up grabbing for two stamping plates - although they are very much a pair, if you ask me, for this mani because I felt like the larger single penguin image from the second plate gave the scale that I was looking for to apply to my ring finger. For the rest of my fingers, I used the same image from my middle finger, simply choosing only one penguin from the image to fill in and apply. I use both a dotting tool as well as a couple of nail art brushes (all from NailStuff.ca) to fill in these images since there's some really small areas that I needed to be really careful with. Once the filled in images were dry to the touch but still flexible, I applied a thin layer of sticky base coat to the nails and let it dry down until it was tacky and then transferred the image to my nail. 

When I was finished with my stamping, I sealed everything in with a layer of nail art top coat and then followed with a quick dry glossy top coat for shine and volume. And voila!


All Products Used
Quo - Peek-A-Blue
Whats Up Nails - Neither Noir
Whats Up Nails - Box Of Whine
Whats Up Nails - Sundae Topper
Whats Up Nails - Pumpkin A Day
Whats Up Nails - Blanc My Mind
Color Club Stuck On You Base Coat
Apipila Smudge Free Top Coat
Glisten & Glow Glitter Grabber Top Coat
Vibrant Vinyls Fast & Hard Top Coat
Maniology M038 Kawaii Christmas: Warm & Fuzzy Stamping Plate
Maniology M039 Kawaii Christmas: Santa's Helpers Stamping Plate
BeautyBigBang Clear Stamper
NailStuff.ca Dotting Tool**
NailStuff.ca Nail Art Brushes**

** = PR Gifted from NailStuff.ca - new customers can use affiliate code TRYSH for 10% off your first order!


I am so, so very smitten with how these nails turned out - look how cute those little penguins are. Seriously, I can't get enough of the Kawaii plates from Maniology and I just love penguin nails for the holiday season. Highly, highly recommend trying out something like this for the holidays!

Be sure to check back here on the blog every day in December leading up to Christmas Eve for more nail art designs and head over to @pblnails on Instagram for video tutorials of all of my nails. It's super relaxing!

Thanks for reading!


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