Friend’s Fingers Monday? – Candy Cane Shimmer

With all of the holiday prep and spending a week being sick in bed (but apparently noncontagious?), the blog has fallen a little behind. Sandra and I are still meeting for nails once a week though, and she gets to listen to me moan about how terrible I feel, and then I paint her nails anyway. It works out. Anyway, before we met last week, I’d been sending her piles of Pinterest pictures of Christmas nail art, and she fell in love with the candy cane look. I dug through my stamping plates for this image I knew I had somewhere, and I pulled it out before she got here.

This is two coats of essie – Urban Jungle stamped with Sally Hansen Insta-Dri – Racin’ Red. I encouraged Sandra away from a stark white, since so many candies have that bit of food colouring bleed, and I was impressed and surprised at how well Urban Jungle worked for this. I think they look very candy like.

The only candy-cane striped stamping plate I have is from the Bundle Monster CYO 2013 set, plate BM-423 which also features zig zags, polka dots, headphones and popcorn. Sure why not, Bundle Monster. Earlier in the summer I went through my plates for a candy cane stamp, and was satisfied to find this one, but it was just barely big enough for Sandra’s long nails. I was pretty proud of how well I did with them, even despite the cuticle gap on the middle finger. Her thumbs aren’t shown, but I centered them exactly as needed, and I don’t think they could have been even a fraction of an inch off. But sadly, no pictures.

I did a stand up job of showing off how well I can smear red stamping with top coat, and then added a coat of Julep – Katerina a pink flakie topper I got in the October Maven box. I really loved the look of that, it made me think of cellophane wrapped candies (and it hid the streaks pretty well too!). It’s subtle, but it adds a little life to straight lines.

Have you had candies on your nails this season, or do you prefer to leave the candies for eating? I’ve certainly had a bit of both so far! I hope you’re ready or nearly ready for the holidays! I still need to wrap all my husband’s gifts!