My Top Ten Festive Nail Essentials

1. I think it's important to mention that winter can be tough on your hands and nails so my first few items are nail care rather than nail decoration products.  My very first, and favourite, essential for winter is Lush Lemon Flutter, I use it every night after I paint my nails, rubbing it into the cuticles to keep them soft and moisturised.

 

 

 

2. I also love Superdrug's Cuticle Oil Pen, there's a post HERE about it in more detail, which is so handy to keep at my desk or in my bag for a little moisture top up.

 

 

 

3. Finally, I like to use Lotil cream & cotton gloves on my hands overnight for a super moisturise and dry skin buster, Lotil seems to work wonders on all sorts of hand issues so I like to apply it thickly a few times a week and then cover with gloves to give my hands a nice intensive treatment.

 

 

 

4. Now on to the decorating of your nicely cared for nails!  As you can probably tell if you read my blog last year, I love using stamps to create Christmas themed looks.  I use a whole variety, my newest set being Bundle Monster Holiday Plates post about that set HERE, Bunny Nails also do some cute plates posts on those HERE and HERE.  Pretty much all the sets of stamping plates I have bought have odd images which are good for Christmas so it's worth having a look about before ordering the first you see.

 

 

 

5. Holiday themed stickers are another of my favourite ways to decorate festive nails, you can see posts on where I get mine HERE, HERE and HERE.  They are such a simple way to jazz up a manicure and the effects can be quite impressive.

 

 

 

Now, on to my favourite festive polishes of this year.

 

6. First up a bit of a cheat, rather than using one place in the top ten for each of these I am joining them all together under the heading Kiko's Christmas releases, you can see my haul HERE.   I've already posted about two of the Sugar Mats and tomorrow's post is about the first of the Digital Emotion holographic glitters, I am really loving these polishes so far and will no doubt feature very prominently in my Christmas manicures this year.

 

 

 

7.  Models Own Scarlet Sparkle, the perfect Christmas red.  Bright red gelly polish crammed full of sparkly red glitter, I love this polish!

 

 

 

8.  Boots No7 nail polish in Sun Rays, on the website HERE, keep an eye out for a post tomorrow which will show you just how gorgeous this opaque, super sparkly gold glitter is. ;)

 

9.  Kiko Starry Indigo, a perfect cool Christmas blue jam packed full of glitter, this one works especially well under stamping.

 

 

 

10.  Revlon Emerald City, a gorgeous dark green which dries matte but looks extra gorgeous when it's top coated, prefect on it's own or ideal for a bit of festive nail art.

 

 

So, those are my festive picks for this year, what else would you add?