Christmas is over and my nails took a bit of a battering with all those Roses and Quality Street I had to open not to mention unwrapping presents! I did away with the christmas trees (see them here) and decided to go with a fireworks design for NYE.

I’m pleased with my final result:

I started with a clear coat of Sally Hanson’s “Double Duty” Base and top coat followed by one coat of Essie 760 “Bobbing for Baubles“:

It’s incredibly hard to get a good picture of how this polish looks, it’s a grey-navy colour in daylight but dark grey almost black in low light.

I then used my smallest nail dotting tool to draw a basic star shape with Rimmel I Love Lasting Finish 198 “Azure” polish:

I did this for all of my nails and gave it a minute or two to dry before I added my next polish, Rimmel Spacedust 006 “Moon Walking” (looks like it’s discontinued but I found it on EBay) This one is a textured glittery purple which I love on its own and I knew it would be perfect for this design. I drew overlapping stars in the purple glitter polish and they were starting to look like fireworks 🙂

I then moved on to my final colour, Orly “Luxe”. This was a freebie from a magazine but I will definitely be looking for a full size bottle when it runs out. This is the same polish I used for the baubles on my christmas tree design.

With this polish I simply filled in any blank parts of my nails and added some dotting randomly across the nail as well:

Then all that was left to do was clean up. I am pretty bad at painting carefully but I have now found a very effective way to clean up around my nails!

This wasn’t my own idea but I definitely advocate it. I can’t find the tutorial I originally saw this on but I’ll add a link when I come across it again. I have an old contact lense case and I keep nail varnish remover in the blue side and plain water in the white side. I use an eye liner brush and dip it into the nail varnish remover, wipe the excess on the edge of the case and then sweep it around the edges of my nails to clean up the polish. I then use the water to just rinse off the brush between nails and dry it on a tissue.

I always do this before my final clear coat as the messy coloured polish comes off more easily and I can touch up if I go a bit over the top with the remover.

And with a clear coat I’m done and ready to party on NYE or babysit for four boys as it happens!