A little while ago, my friend Hollee sent me a link to a blog post featuring "candy cane nails". I've seen this idea on a few blogs and YouTube channels but I wanted to tone down the candy cane pattern to one nail instead of having it on all 10. Hollee also asked me how one should go about making this design, since the aforementioned blog post didn't include any instructions.



So, here's my take on some festive, candy cane nails!

2. Take your white nail polish, mine is Porcelain Party by Maybelline, and paint your ring finger. Make sure the polish is opaque and not streaky. As you can see, I also needed about 3-4 coats on this nail.

5. Now we're going to cut the tape into a few strips. You will place these strips on your nail to form a stencil for your red candy cane stripes. You can move this around however you like, making the stripes wider or thinner. Make sure to press the edges of the tape down as not to let any polish run under the tape.

6. Now we add the fun glittery polish! I used my Christmas favorite from last year, Essie's Leading Lady.

7. Remove the strips of scotch tape right away. We don't want the polish to dry with the tape still on there since the tape will then pull the nail polish.

As you can see, my stripes are in no way perfect. You definitely need some practice with the scotch tape process. For me, sometimes the stripes come out really nicely and other times if the tape didn't stick to my nail too well, nail polish would leak underneath.

8. This is where my handy-dandy nail polish corrector pen from Essence comes in. I love this thing. I always use it when painting my nails. It's perfect to clean up any polish that has landed on your cuticles and skin. And in this instance, I used the corrector pen to clean up the candy cane lines just a tiny bit - with a very light hand. Since the red polish is still very wet and the white polish has dried, you can very lightly pick up a bit of red polish with the angled corrector pen without ruining your white base. AND, this pen is so cheap!

9. I decided to add a third candy cane stripe since the lower part of my nail looked really empty. I simply picked up one of the extra scotch tape strips and placed it in the white area of my nail and added some red glitter polish diagonally to the corner of my nail. 

10. You can of course leave the nails like this, but nothing screams festive like glitter! I added some silver glitter polish, Set in Stones by Essie, to the tip of my middle finger nail. Presto!

I actually really enjoy how these turned out. Thank you Hollee for the idea!

I like taking classic red nails and adding a twist. This makes them not all too crazy and wearable, but still fun and festive for the holiday season.

Will you be rocking some festive nails over the holidays?