While I do a LOT of planning for holiday nail art, this mani actually sort of came out of nowhere when my Clear Jelly Stamper Black Friday order arrived just when I was about to do some nails. As I was looking at the CJS-LC-100 Stamping Plate, the idea for this design just came together and I had to get it onto my nails. I am definitely still getting the hang of layered stamping (and am very much a perfectionist when it comes to trying to get it right) but I'm really, really loving playing with layered designs.

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While I did briefly consider going in a more non-traditional direction with this design, in the end I decided that I just wanted to keep it really, really and straightforward. And, of course, this gave me the opportunity to reach for a polish in my collection that I can pretty much exclusively use at Christmas time. ILNP's Christmas Cookie is a white crelly packed with fine red and green metallic flakes. I love a speckled crelly as a nail art base and since this one is just so seasonal, I couldn't let the season pass without pulling it out.

I started by applying 2 coats of Christmas Cookie to all of my nails and letting those dry down. Next, I went in with my white stamping polish and just swiped a loosey goosey white tip to each nail to give the look of snow ground. 

When it came to choosing which tree I would apply to which nail, I basically just went by size just so that the scale of each tree worked with the nail I was placing it on. I used five different stamping polishes for this step - two different green shades for the tree, a red for various decorations, a brown for the stem, and of course a black for the outlining. I also used the CJS Lil Bling Stamper for this step, giving good visualization for placement. As I'm still getting the hang of layered stamping, I did take my time at this point and on two of my nails I will admit that I didn't get it right the first time and had to redo it from scratch.

Once I was happy with my design, I sealed everything in with a nail art top coat and followed with a matte top coat to bring down shine and make sure everything looked smooth. And voila!

Seriously, I can't even tell you how happy I am with how this turned out. Every time I do layered stamping, I become more and more enamored with it. It definitely takes a bit of patience and practice, but once you get it, it brings together really detailed looks so much more quickly than any other technique. I can definitely see why professionals use this style of stamping so much!