I really, really wanted to do gingerbread nails again last year after how much I loved the ones I did last year, but I really wanted to do a design that would stand completely apart from that one also - so I decided to go super cute. I mean... obviously gingerbread men are super cute to begin with, but the Maniology Kawaii Christmas plates take that cuteness to a whole other level, I'd say, and I just fully went all in with it. I mean... I feel like you really sort of have to!

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One of the hardest things for me when I'm working with smaller images, like the ones I used for this mani, is figuring out what to do for my base. Honestly, that really is the part I struggle with the most and the part that I feel like makes the difference between and okay mani and a really exciting one.

For the base for this design, I really sort of went back and forth on what I wanted to do before really deciding to lean into the gingerbread color story. I grabbed for Sinful Colors Coffee Drip, which is this warm brown shade with gold shimmer running through it that just screamed gingerbread to me, and applied two coats to all of my nails as my base. I decided to pair it with this sort of candy striped stamping in white to evoke a bit of a candy cane vibe without being too on the nose color wise. 

While I considered doing all gingerbread men for this design, I decided instead to pair the two gingerbread men images with the hot drink and cupcake images because I thought they would work really cohesively in this design. To fill in the images, I used a midtone warm brown, a crisp white, and a really bold classic red along with a 4mm nail art brush and a dotting tool. I like to fill in directly on my stamper and transfer straight from there to the nail, so that's how I did it. Once the images were dry to the touch but still sort of squishy, I applied a thin layer of sticky base coat and let it get tacky. I first applied that candy striped image over my base polish and then went directly in with the reverse stamped images and applied them towards the center of the nail.

Once I was happy with my stamping, I sealed everything in with a nail art top coat and the followed with a matte top coat to take down the shine and really drive home the gingerbread vibe. And voila!

I'm so, so happy with how this one turned out. Admittedly, it wasn't an entirely smooth process and I did end up having to redo a couple of nails after the first try, but I think it was worth it. One thing that I think people don't necessarily realize is that though it does get smoother with practice, sometimes even with experience and skill getting to the finished mani can take some trial and error and frustratio, but it's worth it!

Be sure to check back here on the blog for new holiday themed nail art designs every day in December leading up to Christmas Eve. Also, head over to @pblnails on Instagram for video tutorials of all of the nail art designs I post here on the blog!

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