Holly Day

China Glaze - Holly Day

Orly - Meet Me Under the Mistletoe

Sinful Colors - Red Striper

Essie - Matte About You

Tonight's manicure was a lot of fun and easy to do.  I knew I wanted to use Holly Day, but after I put it on I was kind of bored with it.  So I added a top coat of Matte About You. I love playing with contrasting mattes and shiny finishes.  The only bad thing about the matte top coat is that the tips get dinged very easy, so I knew I wanted to put something else on the tips.

That's when I remembered that I had gotten the Mistletoe color at Sally.  So I threw that on the tips.  It's almost exactly the same color as Holly Day, but it has some glitter in it. I just did those free hand.   But even after that, you couldn't really see the contrast between the two colors as much as I wanted, so that's when I decided to add the red stripe.  I think it makes this mani more Christmasy, and I'm really happy with the way it turned out. 

I also thought that in this entry I would share a pic of what it takes to get glitter polish off your nails.  Now, I like glitter polish a lot, but taking it off is a major pain.  And I change my manicures so often that I don't like to wait for glitter polish to come off, so I don't wear it on my full nails that oftenl.  But anyway, when I do decide to wear it, this is how I get it off:

This is what I like to call "The Tin Man Procedure".  I found this trick online several months ago and it's the best way I've found to remove glitter or flakie polish.  Inside each of these aluminum foil pieces is a cotton ball soaked in nail polish remover.  After I put these on one hand, I sit and wait for a few mins and then it comes right off.  I've tried to do both hands at once but at one point there was a tragic incident of remover spillage resulting in stains on my favorite jammie pants and since then I just do one hand at a time.  :)

Also, can I just say that I think my fingers look unnaturally long when I take a picture with my hand flat as in the aluminum foil pic above, and that is why I always bend my fingers when I take pics of my manicures. 

And finally, it turns out that TWO people are reading my blog.  Hi Lori!  :)