Winter Holiday Challenge: Gingerbread Man and Candy Canes

Hello lovelies! It's finally Friday and I can't tell you how happy I am about this. I will be going away this weekend, so again I will have to apologize in advance for my absence. Today I have another one of the winter holiday challenges to show you. I will be posting these every Wednesday and Friday this month, so check back on these days if you wanna see them. The theme for today is Gingerbread Man and Candy Canes. I went with something more complicated this time and it took me quite some time to do. Unfortunately, the photos didn't come out that good. The nails look much better in reality, but I still hope you will like them. 

I've had this design in my head for over a week, but of course I did it in the last minute. I had the idea of doing the gingerbread man's head on the ring finger and his body on the thumb. The only problem is, my fingers aren't very bendy, so bringing my thumb and ring finger together is quite hard. It makes my hand look like a claw, but I can assure you that this is the best I could do. 

I started with a base of Orly Au Champagne and covered all nails except for the ring finger and the thumb with Seche Vite. This is mandatory because you have to be sure that your polish is dry, so you can use tape. I painted the gingerbread man using various polishes and a thin nail art brush. I'm pretty rusty at free hand nail art and I was very tired, so I admit it could have looked a lot better. Then I started masking thick stripes on the other nails with striping tape. Since the striping tape is so thin, I had to do multiple pieces for each thick stripe. Then I painted over them with China Glaze Ring In The Red and took off the tape. 

I have to tell you that doing the striping on all fingers took a lot of time. And I do mean a lot. This type of manicure definitely needs patience and time. On my left (dominant) hand I only did the candy canes on all fingers. Here's a glimpse of my left hand. 

I do like the end result a lot. The manicure looks great on my fingers because of the fun colors and pattern, Plus there's glitter involved! And I think the stripes actually elongate my fingers. To see what the other ladies participating in the challenge have come up with today, check the links below!