My Christmas Nails!

   Hey everyone! This will obviously be my last post for the Christmas nail season. I really hope everyone has a awesome Christmas holiday, and here's some very festive red with gold leaf!

 The red I used for this one was Ciaté Dangerous Affair aka my new favorite red. This read is slightly darker in real life, the flash caused it to look lighter. The gold leaf was from a regular sheet of fake gold leaf. I ripped it up and pressed it onto the wet nail polish with my fingers. Then I finished with one coat of Seche Vite.

Merry Christmas everyone! Love Zoe

Gold Leaf Half Moon

  Hey guys! Here is a mani that I am so excited to share, my Gold Leaf Half Moon nails. This started out with my trying to do something completely different and then this being the end result. That seems to happen to me a lot, but that's ok in this case, because I LOVE this! I feel like this would be perfect for a fancy holiday party or something.

   The red color I'm using here is Dangerous Affair from Ciate. It's a very deep, dark, red wine color. The bottom picture shows the color more true to real life. I really love the formula on this, and most of the other Ciate colors that I've tried, it goes on really nice and the color is always perfectly even in two coats. It dries really fast too.

  The gold leaf is just regular faux gold leaf. I'm sure you could find it at a regular craft store. I put it on by putting a thin layer of clear polish over the red and picking up some shredded gold leaf with an orange wood stick and then placing it where I wanted it. If I messed up a little, I just took the red and covered what I didn't want to show. I finished it off with a coat of Seche Vite.

Open Seas

       Time for another gold leaf gradient! This time I used one of my new Sinful Colors polishes, Open Seas. It's a really pretty sea foam green color. I also used some Essie Gold as it Gets on my ring finger with the gradient.

Gold leaf Gradient

 

       

      This is Essence What Do You Think and a gold leaf accent.

Studded

       Hey guys! I have been eying those tiny square studs for quite some time now. I finally caved and bought some and I'm so happy that I did.

      Studs are a huge trend right now on everything from shorts, shirts, and even nails! I made a pretty big purchase from dollarnailart.com about two weeks ago and made sure to buy some square studs along with a ton of other stuff. I'll definitely be making a post about all of the goodies I got very soon.

      Along with the studs, I also got some gold leaf/nugget foily stuff.

    
     To do these nails, I polished all of my nails black. I used Essence Black is Back. I took some of the gold nugget stuff and crumpled it up using an orange wood stick and the end of a nail brush. It's super delicate and light so it was really easy to rip apart, but you have to be careful not to breath or blow in the wrong direction because it could go flying everywhere. I learned that the hard way.

       I did a thin coat of a clear polish that I had and, with a stick, I picked up some of the gold nugget and just pressed it onto my nail where I wanted it. I wanted it to be like a gradient, so I tried to concentrate the gold more near the tip.
      
      Then, I just put the studs where I wanted them, added a coat of top coat and I was done.