String o' lights

On the third day of Christmas, my true love gave to me.. Christmas lights! Ha, okay. That was pathetic, but it had to be done. When do the twelve days of Christmas start? If anyone knows, please inform me ASAP. I heard that it begins on Christmas and ends on January 6th, but I am not quite certain. 

Right, back to the nails. I had this design on two weeks ago (yes, a recent mani!!) to get myself into the holiday spirit. The front facade of my humble abode is lite up with white lights, so I thought I'd pay tribute to them on my nails. The base is two layers of Sinful Color's Sugar Sugar which is a classic red infused with specks of glitter. After the layers dried, I painted in random cords of lights with black paint along with the stem (I don't know the correct term, so stem it is) of the light bulb. Once I finished that, I painted the little white bulbs, and covered it with a top coat. I aimed for the shape of the light bulbs that I'm holding in the picture below, but by the time I reached my pinky, they had turned into mini triangles. 

I cringe at the fact that I forgot to clean off the skin around the bed of my nails.. I could have taken new pictures after cleaning them, but laziness got me. I apologize for the grossness.

One of the problems that I ran into was the bulbs turning into triangles by the end. It's hard to tell and I'm most likely being hypercritical. Next time I try it, I'm definitely going to be more careful with the shape consistency. 

TIPS:  White over red = pink. Obviously. I first applied white paint resulting in pink light bulbs. I went over it again with white polish and hoped for the best. Unfortunately, they turned a lighter pink that time. I'll have to do further tests with the white over red situation and get back to you all. 

The little bulbs can also be swapped out for any color your heart desires: Multi colored, blue, green... anything you want! Christmas lights are a popular object to incorporate into a mani, but they don't have to all resemble each other. Let your creativity take the reins (Personally, I need to work on this..). If you mess up, it's not the end of the world. And you can always redo it a week, month, or year later. 

-Tamz