10 December, 2012
Beauty, Christmas

DIY Christmas Manis – our easy how-to guide for fun, fab & festive nails!

10 December, 2012

‘Tis the season to deck the nails! With all of the bright lights and decorations, the get-togethers with family and friends, and all-around festive cheer, the Christmas season is a great time to add a little holiday spirit to your manicure – and we’ve put together three fabulous and fun DIY Christmas manis for you to try!

These holiday nail art designs use a couple of tools that should be easy enough to find, or if you like, you can substitute other items you may even have already. Nail art striper polishes, which have long, narrow brushes for painting thin lines, can be found at Sassy fave Cher2 or at BornPrettyStore.com (though if you don’t want to go that route, you can simply use a thin art brush and regular polish). A couple of these designs use a dotting tool, which you can also get from either place mentioned above, or you can use household items instead, like the end of a bent bobby pin, or the tip of a dried-up ballpoint pen. Let’s get started!

 

CANDY CANE NAILS

Whether you’ve been naughty or nice this year, these sweet nails will go down a treat come Christmas day. Best accessorized with some yummy real candy canes, we reckon!

1. After your base coat, apply any bright red polish and let it dry.

2. With a white striper polish, paint two diagonal lines across the middle of your nail.

3. Go back and fill in the space between those lines to make one thick one, then paint two more thin lines, above and below, just a short space away.

4. Skipping a larger space this time, paint the top and bottom corners of your nail as if they’re part of another larger stripe of white.

5. Repeat on your other nails, let dry, add a shiny top coat, and that’s all there is to it!

 

SNOWFLAKE NAILS

We might not have much chance of a white Christmas in HK, but some pretty snowflakes on your nails are almost as good… right?!

1. After your base coat, apply your background polish and let dry. I’ve chosen a dusty light blue (China Glaze Sea Spray), but royal blue or red is also pretty with this design! As an optional step, I’ve added a light sparkling glitter as well (any will do!).

2. With your white striper, paint a plus sign (+) off centre, on 1/4 to 1/3 of your nail.

3. Add a smaller cross (x) of white across the middle of the plus sign.

4. With your dotting tool (or bobby pin) make 4 dots of white at the ends of the plus sign.

5. Add a few smaller dots around your snowflake.

6. Repeat on your other nails, varying the placement of your snowflakes. Let dry, and then add your top coat. Easy!

 

SANTA SUIT ACCENT NAIL

This mani will have you ho-ho-ho-ing all the way to any Christmas party!

You can certainly do this one on all your nails, but I think it looks great on one finger, as an accent. The process is just a little more involved than the other designs, but the individual steps aren’t any more complicated than dots, a sticker and a stripe.

1. Apply your base coat as usual. Once it’s dry, apply a red polish (I used China Glaze Ruby Pumps) to all but your “accent” nail (the nail polish world seems to have decided this is your ring finger, but you can choose whichever you like!). Making sure your base coat is definitely dry on that last nail, put a reinforcement sticker across the base of the nail, the same kind of sticker you’d use to protect the holes on a piece of paper before you put it in a binder (like these!). Cover just a little bit of the base of your nail with it to make the “neckline” of Santa’s jacket, and then apply your red polish.

2. If you like, you can stick the reinforcer to the back of your hand once, then peel it up before putting it on your nail to take a little bit of the stickiness away and make sure it won’t peel up your base coat when you remove it. But before you take the sticker away, leave it on while you apply a 2nd or 3rd coat of red to match your other nails.

3. Once that’s done, simply peel away the sticker to reveal the round space that’s been left empty at the base of your nail. Don’t worry if the line isn’t perfect because you’re about to dot over it.

4. Yep, now for the dotting over it part! With whatever you’re using for your dotting tool, apply some fluffy dots of white around the neckline, at the tip of your nail, and down the centre between the two. After it dries, you may want to go over it a second time to be sure the white is nice and opaque.

5. When all your white is dry, stripe some black a little above the tip to make the belt.

6. Dot a square of silver or gold polish for the buckle.

7. When that’s all dry, apply your top coat, and your Santa suit accent nail is ready to go!

I hope you enjoy these fun festive nail designs for the holidays!

A New Orleans native, Elizabeth has been happy to call Hongkers home since 2007. She’s recently developed an addiction to nail polish and all things sparkly, and is rarely happier than when she’s belting out show tunes… Because she’s cool like that.

Check out Elizabeth’s awesome blog, Did My Nails, for more mani inspiration!

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