The Twelve Polishes of Christmas

Ok, I meant to post this blog a few days before Christmas, but somehow I couldn't find the time to write it. So instead, a small flashback on my Christmas nail polish experience. Maybe you are still feeling the Yule Tide joy, or perhaps you'll find some inspiration for next year!

Christmas truly is my favourite holiday of the whole year. All the lights and colours and great cookie/cake/dinner/tree/candle smells, not to mention the presents just melt me. I love having our family traditions and I absolutely adore all Christmas music. Therefore, this year I wanted to include my new nail polish hobby in all this as well.

At first, I actually contemplated to fill our tree with some 'polished' ornaments.. But I ended up with a nice tree, I think.

I planned to make my own Christmas design, but I also tried out some designs from other Internet tutorials: a snowman/tree design and a Rudolph/tree design.

 My own design was inspired by a lot of things. First of all, I noticed one of my family members had sewn the characters of the Christmas story, with this fantastic result: 

This made me think of making a design about the Nativity story itself. One of the first things that come to mind when I think about the story is Simone Martini's painting of the Annunciation (made in 1333). It is a very medieval style, but I love the use of the gold and the text that Gabriel utters, as well as the general composition of the painting. The text is actually laying on the painting in gold relief, and Gabriel says this: Ave, gratia plena, Dominus tecum (Hail, [Mary] full of grace,  the Lord is with you). I like it that the words move towards Mary, like a speech bubble in a comic book!

Secondly, thinking about art made me think about the greatest shade of night-blue ever, that was used by Giotto, for instance in the Scrovegni chapel in Padua (1305), where he painted the ceiling blue with gold stars.

And thirdly, one of my all time favourite books about Christmas is actually Miffy's Christmas. The way the angels are drawn is just so cute..

Anyway, with all this informtion, I wanted to create some kind of comic book story: the Nativity story in 10 nails or something. But when I had painted on the angel (which did not turn out very perfect, even after two attempts), I decided all those kings and such were going to be too difficult this year. This is not only because of lack of experience, but also because I do not have those plastic nail wheels and therefore have to try out all my designs on my actual nails, which ultimately means that I dread making mistakes. But hey, there's always next year!

So this year, the design turned out like this:

 

Colours used (with the exception of base coat and top coat):
Blue: China Glaze Man Hunt

Gold: L'Oréal Versailles Gold

Dark grey: Maybelline Couture Grey

Light grey: I mixed this colour myself (OPI Alpine Snow and Rimmel Black Out)

White: OPI Alpine Snow, as well as M.A.S.H. white nail art pen

Black: Rimmel Black Out

Turquoise: L'Oréal Perle de Jade

Glitter: China Glaze Techno

The donkey comes from the cute animals that my family member made. At first, I wanted to make a sheep but I thought that a donkey would make a more fun design. The blue colour for the plain nails is the closest colour I had resembling Giotto's midnight blue, the glitter represents the stars. The style of the star and the angel are based on Miffy, although Martini inspired me to actually put the angel on my nail. Martini also gave me the idea of the gold colours.
The snowflake was not based on anything, I just liked it :D
 

I hope this late Christmas nail art post at least brings something of that cosy Christmas spirit back and that you have a happy New Year's Eve tomorrow!