Knowing I had a nail event coming up and I was bound to get a fresh manicure, I decided to go for something unusually minimalist.
This week I picked this pretty metallic golden truffle from Dielle called Metallic Dignity, which can look quite gun metal with a golden sheen, as well as some sparkly green and red particles!
Yes, I am floating around in Christmas spirit (better late than never, no?).
I am not usually a fan of little animals, flowers and drawings in general on my nails but what the hell? It is Christmas after all. So here they are – my super festive Christmas nails!
It has red, gold and a reindeer! Yes, Rudolph is my special guest!
For the red and gold gradient I used the sponging technique with the beautiful The Spy who Loved Me and Golden Eye, both from OPI’s James Bond collection. It was quite a hard gradient to put together, as the gold is not quite glitter – it is like a foiled effect, so a few layers were needed!
I drew the reindeer’s head with the polish brush. I used a deep metallic brown which is the darkest colour from Andrea Fulerton’s duo polish Petrol in Water. Then added the eyes using a dotting tool and Collection Nail Tip Whitener white polish. Used The Spy Who Loved Me red for the nose (with a larger dotting tool) and Barry M’s nail art pen in black for the antlers and black dot in the eye.
I then finished them all with a top coat!
Must admit I like it more than I thought I’d ever like a drawing on my nails – very happy with the result!
How festive!
Happy Christmas to all! 
Antique gold. Well, not quite. I called it like that because I cannot think what colour this is. Weird.
This Gosh Galaxy promised a lot from the bottle – a sort of antique gold base with some colour shifting between blues and pinks. However, it didn’t delivery upon application.
The colour is intriguing; you can spot the antique gold base and the multicoloured flecks. If you look really carefully, in some lighting, there is a very subtle colour shifting. Sadly, not enough to wow me.
I added a pretty star from Nail Art UK, but not even that could save this mani. A waste of two stars, really…
Polish application was fiddly, one coat is very sheer, I have three on. it doesn’t dry too quickly, so the next coat was a bit gloopy. It seemed to get quite thick quickly. Durability is ok.
Overall, the colour is pretty; I like the base colour, I like the flecks but the fact it was beautifully colour-shifting in the bottle really let me down.
As I wasn’t super happy with it, I slapped Barry M croc black effect on it after a couple days, leaving only the star finger as it was, creating an accent nail, which made the mani more interesting. The crocodile skin effect is cute, very delicate and the texture is not too bad. I could still see some gleaming flecks from galaxy through it. But I encountered the same problem with this as I found with crackle topcoats: the durability is appalling – it flakes away very quickly. Plus, as I applied a couple days after I had my nails done, it wasn’t the prettiest finish, you can see a few untidy bits around the cuticle, it was really hard to clean the excess!
So Many Lovely Things 