Santa Claus Manicure

Hello my lovely readers, I can't believe it is Christmas eve already I am such a little kid at Christmas. Can't wait to open up all my pressies tomorrow and see other peoples faces when they receive mine, especially looking forward to seeing Lexi's little face light up at the different activities going on throughout the day. So for my last manicure before the big day I thought nothing would be more appropriate that a jolly Santa mani. After all it is Christmas time when this magical man goes from house to house delivering toys to all of those sleepy little children. Lexi isn't really old enough to be aware of Santa Claus yet, but I am sure next year her daddy will have to dress up and leave some snowy boot prints leading up to the tree just to make it even more magical.

Lets get into this Santa Claus nail art, I was inspired by Kelli Marissa over on Youtube. She recently uploaded an easy way to create a Santa Claus accent nail, follow the link if you would like to see her tutorial. She has some fantastic videos and some great manicure tutorials that are really easy to follow great for beginners and the more advanced nail artist. 

For my manicure i used OPI Cinnamon Sweet this is a great Santa Claus red creme, it has a great formula and is fully opaque in 2 coats. Then for my accent nail on my ring finger I used OPI Bubble Bath, this is a very sheer skin coloured polish. I managed to get this to a reasonable opaqueness in 3 coats, however you can still see my nail line so you may need four for a longer nail. 

Then once I had top coated my base colour and waited for that to fully dry I used a small detail brush to paint in a red hat. I used the same method for my Christmas Minion nails that I uploaded over the weekend, this is a great and easy way to put a hat on any character and you could do any colour. Once the red was dry I applied another coat of top coat so that my design wouldn't smear.

Once that was completely dry I got my large dotting tool and added in some white dots with my China Glaze White on White. This created Santa's fluffy Christmas hat, I then used a very small dotting tool to bring some white down the side of his face and finished off by using the big dotting tool to create a nice fluffy white beard. 

My next step was to add in some small black eyes with another small dotting tool and then with an even smaller one add the little white dots for his pupils. I loved following Kelli's tutorial it made the whole process so much easier and I am quite pleased with how my little Santa turned out. 

To add an even more Christmas feel to this manicure I decided to create some fluffy looking ho ho ho's on my other three nails. To do this I fist used my white nail art pen to trace out some faint H's and O's so that I would have a guide to follow. I then used my small dotting tool to place little dots on each of the lines so that it would give it that fluffy effect I was looking for. 

Once I was sure the white was completely dry I then used my normal top coat to seal in my design. Then I used my Barry M Matte top coat to give it that velvety look that Kelli got from her design. 

Overall I am very pleased with how this manicure turned out, I also stamped Merry Christmas on my thumb nail but I totally forgot to take a picture of that. I hope you all have enjoyed this post, this will probably be my last bit of Christmas themed nail art. So I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and hope you have a wonderful day. 

I have also done a guest post over on A Certain Becca Nails blog head on over there if you would like to see my swatch and review of the Uber Chic Christmas plate.