DIY Christmas nails - 1

Hey Guys,
I was scrolling through twitter when I noticed people had been painting their nails very festive, and naturally I wanted a go. I've had a few compliments on them, but i'm sure mainly out of curiosity.
Anyway I'm going to show you how I transformed my nails, however you must be warned that I will blatantly be showing you my nails and I do bite them (not the nicest), they're very short nails; and it surprised me that I could actually fit my design on.

So after taking inspiration for twitter and tumblr etc.. I decided I wanted to paint my thumb as Santa (which didn't work to well so I picked off) and four little elves.

Here's how I painted my elves:
Firstly I learnt this trick that when do fancy things/patterns on your nails and you don't want to get any varnish on your skin, you should put some sort of tape around the nails, so that's just what I did with masking tape.

Then, I painted my nails with a base of pink/peach for skin and left to dry. I found that using a darker shade of pink, emphasizing the skin, looked nicer and better than trying to get that 'subtle', natural skin colour.
After letting that dry, I used some white dots for the whites of the eyes; seeing as my finger nails aren't that long I designed it to look like the elves were popping their heads up, so I places the white dots at the very tips of my nails.

Afterwards, I painted on the elf hats using two different colours, I would have loved to use green but seeing as I don't own any I went for a mixture of blues. I tried to make the hats look floppy by extending one side to reach the top of the nail.

The pupils were then added to the whites of the eyes, I used a nail art pen for precision but depending on how careful you are, a normal black brush could be used.
There was then the final task of taking off the masking tape, cleaning up and adding a top coat for the end result.

They aren't perfect, as you can see, but I don't mind. The same process can be done for Santa but using red for the hat instead and I used glitter at the rim of the hat for a more festive look. Down below is a list of the products I used and I have some other designs floating around in my head, so look out for some more Christmas nail posts.

Here's a list of the products I used

1. Claire's cosmetics: 727 - pink 
2. Rimmel (I love long lasting): 030 Double Decker - red
3. Rimmel Nail tip whitener - white
4. Mint London: Envy - Dark green
5. Topshop - lighter blue/green
6. Models Own nail art - black
7. Nail varnish remover
8. Silver Glitter
9. Elegant touch rapid dry

Love Daisy x