Every year at Christmas, I try to put together some mani's that aren't in traditional holiday colors - red, green, white, gold, blue, silver, that is - but I'm beginning to find myself thinking that shades of lavender are also becoming a little bit festive in my head. I wouldn't say that this mani is particularly festive, but I do think it's a really fun wintery holiday mani and I'm kind of in love with it. It also utilized layered stamping, which I've always been super intimidated by, and I'm kind of wildly in love with how that aspect of the design turned out. 

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This mani was not-insigificantly inspired by some of the hand painted designs I've seen from nail tech's on Pinterest, if we're being honest, and a lot of those designs featured a purple base so I decided to go with that for this design. When I was choosing the base polish, I knew I wanted sort of a mid toned purple créme, and to be perfectly honest, there really wasn't any hunting around. I just grabbed for Dimension Nails' Lilac Banded Butterfly*, which is a gorgeous purple shade that is somehow both bright and ashy at the same time. This polish, like most other crémes from Dimension Nails, is an absolute dream of a formula with a creamy texture and pigmentation that allows for one coat opacity. OBSESSED.

After applying one coat of Lilac Banded Butterfly, I decided that I wanted to add some texture and a little bit of glow to the base, so I added one coat of Sally Hansen's Glazed Top Coat, which is a pretty, subtle flakie topper.  

For the stamping, I obviously wanted to use the layered polar bear image from the Uberchic It's A Season Of Joy stamping plate and I ultimately decided that I wanted to stick with just the one plate for this design. For my pointer and pinkie fingers as well as my thumb, I applied two snowflakes per nail, one in white and the other in a pale lavender shade. For my middle finger, I applied the full cover snowflake image in the pale lavender and then added a single snowflake in white. And finally, for my ring finger I applied the layered polar bear image in white, lavender, grey and black and then added a single lavender snowflake towards the base of the nail.

Once I was happy with my design, I sealed everything in with a nail art top coat and then finished with a layer of matte top coat to bring down the shine and give a softer look. And voila!

I literally can't even tell you how in love with this design I am. I'm thrilled with how adorable the polar bear stamping turned our and I think the pairing of the snowflakes images and the purple color story is honestly exactly what I was hoping it would be. I will definitely be reaching for more layered stamping images like this one if I have any say in the matter!