KBShimmer Winter Holiday Vinyl Nail Art!

•  Index: 3 coats of OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls
• Middle and Ring: 2 coats of KBShimmer Pt Young Thing.
• Pinky: 2 coats of OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls. I used a dry fan brush gently dipped in OPI Over & Over A-Gwen and brushed it side to side for a striped look.
• Each nail was topped with one coat of KBShimmer Clearly On Top and left to dry for 15-30 mins. (I just found other things I had to do around the house while I waited.)

Step 2) Once they were able to dry for a while, I applied the desired KBShimmer Winter Holiday Vinyl Decals. Make sure to gently, but firmly, press the decals down to the edges of the nail so you don’t get polish sneaking under them.

• Index: one of the spiral mint candy designs. As you can see, your nails could be longer and wider than mine and still fit the design. I had to use my needle nose tweezers to poke out some of the negative space areas after peeling up from the sheet. 
• Middle and Ring: 2 of the Christmas light strings on each finger.
• Pinky: three candy cane shapes. I made sure to have part of each hanging off of the nail so I would be able to easily peel them back up. If you try to center one on a nail, I don’t know how you would get it back off without messing up the polish.

Step 3) One nail at a time, I painted or sponged the desired top color over the entire nail and peeled up the decal before moving onto the next nail. I couldn’t show this step as I had to peel them back up while it was still wet.

• Index: I used a makeup sponge and dabbed OPI Christmas Gone Plaid over the spiral nail to look like a mint candy. (note: I tried this decal once before by painting the polish on, but upon removal, some of the polish spilled over the thin sections. I definitely recommend sponging the color on so there isn’t excess.)
• Middle and ring: I wanted the look of lights on a Christmas tree, so I used a fan brush and swiped from cuticle to tip with both KBShimmer Honeydew List and OPI Christmas Gone Plaid. This gave slight texture and was more like a tree than one solid green.
• Pinky: I used a makeup sponge and dabbed the textured KBShimmer Dressed To Gild over the candy canes until there was full coverage.

Step 5) Clean up skin/cuticles, add details, and then top coat!

• Index: I cleaned up the sponged green off of my skin and cuticles and added KBShimmer Clearly On Top top coat to seal in the design.
• Middle and Ring: I used a small dotting tool and the following glitter textures to add color to the lightbulbs on the strings of lights: KBShimmers Too Pop To Handle, Turnip The Beet, Too Cold To Hold, She Twerks Out, and Dressed To Gild. I then added one coat of KBShimmer Clearly On Top top coat to seal it all in. (The addition of the textures really tied in the pinky nail color choice, while the tree colors tied in the spiral on the index finger.)
• Pinky: I used q-tips and a cleanup brush with acetone to remove any excess glitter on the skin and cuticles. I chose to not top coat this nail and let the texture be fun. The candy canes show through with the stripes I made with a fan brush on the base color and I really love how it turned out! Michelle from Things I Love At The Moment did a watermarble base for using her candy canes and this was my simplified idea of that since I didn’t want to copy her idea completely.  

• Index: I applied the tree-ornament-tree strand across the middle of my nail. The top half of my nail was painted with OPI Christmas Gone Plaid and the bottom half was painted with OPI Cinnamon Sweet. I carefully overlapped each color onto the nail vinyls without crossing into the wrong half of the nail. While still wet, I used my needle nose tweezers to carefully peel the vinyl across the nail to reveal the shapes. KBShimmer Clearly On Top was used to seal in the design.
• Middle: I did the same as with the index nail, but I used the candy cane-ornament strand across the nail.
• Ring: I did the same as with the previous nails, but I used the tree-ornament-ornament strand across the nail.
• Pinky: I did the same as with the previous nails, but I used the ornament strand across the nail.

 The use of the tweezers helped when some of the vinyl strips broke partway across the nail. Some of the images are thinner and can stretch and break off if you pressed them down hard to begin with. I was able to easily grab with the tweezers and continue removal without messing the design.

• Index and pinky: I applied one snowflake strand down the center of each nail from cuticle to tip. Then, I painted one coat of KBShimmer Radiant Orchid on the entire nail. While still wet, I used my needle nose tweezers to remove the nail vinyl strips from the tip back toward the cuticle. This strand of connected snowflakes was the most difficult to remove because the thin part between each snowflake wasn’t strong enough to handle to pressure of pulling up. I had to grab part way through the nail and pull again on the part that stayed on the nail. Although I had trouble, the removal with the thin tweezers didn’t cause any issues with the final look. I wish I had picked a more contrasting color for the top but you can still see that they are snowflakes.
• Middle: I applied one large snowflake to the entire nail. These are big! I was happy that you could still see it was a snowflake despite hanging over the sides. Once applied, I painted one coat of KBShimmer Stonewashed over the entire nail. The part that slightly hung off the sides of my nail saved me because it gave me something to grab with my needle nose tweezers. I had to be careful during removal on this shape, too, as it had parts sticking around the outside. 
• Ring: this is my favorite design in this mani. I applied one medium snowflake and 2 small snowflakes hanging off of my nail. One coat of KBShimmer Hugs And Wishes was painted on top and then I peeled the vinyls back up while it was still wet. The snowflakes hanging over the nail were much easier to remove because part of the wide center of each snowflake was able to be grabbed for removing. It was able to take the pressure of removal and I had no parts break off during removal. The big contrast in the colors also made this my favorite nail. 

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