Christmas Presents

Merry Christmas Eve to everyone who celebrates it!  Even if you don't, I have a super cute present manicure to show you!  

I started out with a coat of Essie Protein Base Coat.  This really protects your nails from stains!  I then painted two coats of Essie Good as Gold on all my nails except for my ring fingers.  I painted two coats of Sinful Colors Gogo Girl on them.  When that was dry I applied one coat of Sally Hansen Dries Instantly to all my nails so the tape wouldn't pull up my base color.  

I then applied a slightly off-center cross of striping tape to each of my nails.  I wanted to create what looks like ribbons over wrapped boxes.  I painted Sinful Colors Gogo Girl over all of my gold nails, and Essie Good as Gold over my red nails.  

After painting each nail I immediately removed the striping tape with tweezers.  I made sure I remembered the order in which I put on the tape so that I wouldn't pull the piece crossed under the other piece of tape.  That can ruin your manicure.

When the manicure was dry, I took a small nail art brush and painted on the bows.  I used Nicole Glitter in My Stocking on all my nails but my ring fingers.  On my ring fingers I used the same red that I had been using, Sinful Colors Gogo Girl.  To make the red bows a little more opaque, I went over them again after the first coat had dried.

My final step before my top coat and clean-up was to apply a gold 1.5 mm stud in the middle of each bow.  I used clear polish and a dotting tool to stick them on.  I then applied two coats of Sally Hansen Dries Instantly.  

I do not own any cuticle oil, but I wanted my cuticles to look a little more moisturized for my pictures.  So I used coconut oil.  It worked super well!  That stuff is great!

Merry Christmas everyone!