Christmas Crafting: Nail Polish Ornaments

Got any nail polishes that you love the look of but never wear and don't want to get rid of?  Do you own any Mentality nail polish that you don't feel safe wearing?  Or are you like me, and have a ton of polish and want to actually use some of it up?  Then I've got a craft that I think you'll enjoy!

 

I got this idea from Elizabeth of My World Sparkles Lacquers.  At first I was a little weary to dump out significant amounts of polish at a time, but then I was like "oh please, look at how many bottles of nail polish you have! Do iiiit."  So I bought a 12-pack of small glass ornaments from JoAnn Fabrics (I assume you can find these at most craft stores and pretty much anywhere with a good selection of ornaments) and decked them out!

Elizabeth used much bigger ornaments, so she set hers up on top of open mason jars while they dried.  Since the ornaments that I bought are so small (probably about 1.5" in diameter), I propped mine up on top of opened lotion bottles and their caps.

The process was simple, though a bit lengthy:

1. Pour polish into bulb

2. Swirl polish around, coating entire interior

3. Pour out immediate excess (back into polish bottle - no need to waste yet!)

4. Set ornament tilted downwards, so that no polish will drip out, and allow excess to gather

5. Pour out excess polish (at this point, it's probably thickened enough that you won't want to put it back into the bottle.  I laid out paper towels and newspaper.)

6. Set ornament upright

7. Repeat steps 4-5 if necessary

8. Set ornament upside down and allow to drip out. (Keep an eye on it, though - I let too much polish drip out of one of them and it ended up less opaque than I wanted it!)  Elizabeth put paper towels into her mason jars for this step, but I didn't really want to clean out all of my lotion bottles.  What I ended up doing was only dripping out one ornament at a time into an empty water bottle.

9. Add a second coat if necessary, and repeat steps 1-8 (but don't pour the excess back into the bottle in step 3 if you're using a different color!)

When layering different polishes in these, be sure to do it in the opposite order of painting your nails!  Apply glitters/toppers first, then the base color.

Since I was doing so many of these, I usually started the next ornament after step 3 of the previous one.  It was so much fun!  My dining room was filled with lots of odd scents between the opened lotion bottles and all of the nail polish!  Not exactly the smell I'm used to when decorating for Christmas. :)

Here's a video tutorial of my process:

 

I'm so excited to hang these on our tree this year!  Since we don't have a tree yet (it's in the mail!), I used a bobby pin and my regular light box to take photos of my lovely new ornaments.  Pretty crafty, eh?

Sinful Colors Twilight Twinkles and Sally Hansen CSM Hi Ho Silver

I actually bought Twilight Twinkles specifically for this craft!  I'd hoped that I would use most of it up, but there's still plenty left.  These small ornaments probably only use about 1/4-1/3 of a full-sized bottle of polish.  If you really want to use up a whole bottle of polish, either get bigger ornaments or do multiple ornaments in the same color!

Twisted Colors Elf Vomit and China Glaze White on White

I was hesitant to use Twisted Colors polishes in these ornaments, because sadly Twisted Colors has closed their shop, possibly forever.  But the three Christmas polishes that I got last year are just so perfect for these that I decided to sacrifice some future manis.

Jior Couture Son of a Nutcracker

Nicole by OPI Heavenly Angel and Zoya Mosheen

I considered adding a white background to this one, but I rather like it clear!  Hopefully I can place it strategically in front of a light bulb on the tree so the light can sparkle through.

Ellagee Jeweled Egg Hunt

Okay, I'm going to need to swatch this one soon.  It's amAzing.  All that density is in only two coats!  I'm sure that on the nail, one coat would be almost completely opaque.

Wet n Wild Rockin' Rubies and Sally Hansen CSM Red My Lips

Youch, my phone really messed this one up.  It's nowhere near this neon red in person - and it's actually quite sparkly!  But cameras hate the color red, as I've learned quite well over the past year.

Twisted Colors All Spruced Up and Spoiled by Wet n Wild Green to be Heard

I mean, how could I NOT use this one for an ornament?!  It's so perfect!

Wet n Wild Back Alley Deals and Sally Hansen CSM Blue My Mind

This is the one that I accidentally let too much polish drip out of.  Oops!  I still like it.

Wet n Wild Diamond in the Rough and Hi Ho Silver

The Wet n Wild polish is actually pretty black, but even two coats of it was super sheer in the ornament.  I chose to use a silver background because I figured black would be a bit too dark for a Christmas ornament!  (As in, literally too dark.  Not that I think black is too depressing or whatever.)

Twisted Colors Star of Wonder and Essie Style Cartel

Unghhh. So pretty!  It's much darker and more sparkly in person, but as always, dark colors + camera = bleh.

 

Jior Couture Means a Little Bit More and 

Creative Cuticles Nail Polish Please Have Snow and Mistletoe

I couldn't decide which of these glitters I'd prefer to use, so I mixed them!  I really like the glitter ornaments that I didn't add a background color to.  They look like snowglobes!

Wet n Wild 24 Carats

The little flakes don't show up so well in this shot, but this polish has some gorgeous red flakies in it!  It's super gorgeous and very Christmasy.

Have you ever done anything like this?  What are your favorite Christmas/holiday decorations?  Let me know in the comments!

Jior Couture: Part of the Merry Movie Collection (retiring soon!)

I'm super excited about this post, because for the first time since I started blogging, I received these polishes at a highly discounted price in exchange for swatches and a review!  So, to start off, let me promise you that I did not promise to say anything in particular; all of the words and opinions you'll read here are 100% my own and are influenced only by the polish itself, not the low price I paid for it.

These polishes are all from Jior Couture's Christmas 2014 collection, and each one is inspired by a different Christmas movie.  The colors are very versatile - they don't scream "Christmas on my nails" the way you might expect.  Which is awesome because, as much as I love a super-Christmasy polish, I like to feel like I can wear my polishes at any time of year and not feel out-of-season.

Believing Is Seeing

Believing Is Seeing is inspired by the movie "The Santa Clause," which I've actually never seen.  And even though this soft pink crelly is a Christmas polish, it really looks to me more like a spring polish!

A beautiful delicate pink crelly with several different colors and sizes of glitter, Believing Is Seeing really surprised me.  Pink is simply not my favorite polish color, and I've never seen a pink polish that made me go, "Ooh, I need that!" the way most blue polishes do.  So I wasn't really expecting to be terribly impressed by this polish, but wow, it is gorgeous!  I love the subtle, delicate shimmer in the base (which is much more visible in the flash photo).  And even though the glitters look pretty dense in the bottle, they come out pretty sparse onto the nail.  I suppose that could be a negative thing for some, but I liked the delicate effect of fewer glitters.  More "Oh, what a pretty polish, and look, it has some glitter in it!" and less "Ooh, what a dense glitterbomb!"

As far as application goes, Believing Is Seeing is really great.  It's very smooth, and the glitters don't cling to the brush or wipe off the nail.  It is very sheer, though, so if you don't want to see the line of the whites of your nail, I highly recommend using a base of white or a similar shade of pink.  Otherwise, you might need to build up to 4 or 5 coats; I stopped at 2 on my first two fingers, and went up to 3 coats on my ring and pinky fingers.  Three coats is opaque enough that from a distance you can't really see the whites of my nails, but up close and in the photos it's still sort of visible.

I recently got a macro lens for my phone's camera!  I haven't quite mastered the macro nail shot the way 

The Mercurial Magpie has, but in-the-bottle shots are pretty easy, so feast your eyes!

Son of a Nutcracker

Son of a Nutcracker is inspired by the movie Elf.  It's a really fun glitter polish in a pinkish-red jelly base.

 

I was actually really surprised at the opacity of this polish - two coats was pretty opaque!  I built up to three coats on my pointer and middle fingers, but left it at two on my ring and pinky fingers.

Application was pretty nice, but in order to get a nice distribution of glitter I did have to dab a little bit.  And I was slightly disappointed at how hard it was to grab those big white hex glitters - there are so many in the bottle, yet I could barely get them onto my nail.  But all the rest of the glitters went from the brush to my nails quite easily.

There's an incredibly subtle shimmer in the base of this polish - so subtle that it definitely doesn't show up in my camera even in macro mode, but if you look really closely in person, it's there!  I think subtle shimmers are one of my favorite features in nail polish.

Means A Little Bit More

Means A Little Bit More is inspired by the movie How The Grinch Stole Christmas.  (The cartoon or the live-action version?  I'm not sure, but either way this polish nails it!)  Of these three polishes, it's definitely the most Christmas-y, but I still think it would look nice in a mani any time of year!

Its green jelly base is very sheer.  If you want complete opacity, you'd probably need at least 5 coats of this one - or just use a base color.  I have three coats over naked nails here and, although my nails are tragically short after a ghastly break, you can still juuust make out a little bit of the whites of my nails at the tips.  The break that I suffered led me to cut my nails down so short that there's barely any whites left - and on my middle finger, one side broke so far down that I wasn't able to cut it into an even shape.  It was heartbreaking :(

Anyway, the polish!  I absolutely loved this one.  Application was super, super smooth - the glitters landed where I wanted them to and stayed in place, and it was nice and easy to get a good distribution of every size and color of glitter!  Pink, blue, red, silver, they're all there looking super festive and pretty.  I really like the sizes of these glitters - I think smaller glitters apply easier and look a bit better on my nails.  That's not to say that I completely dislike larger glitters - you all know that I love a good crazy glitterbomb! - but sometimes it's refreshing to use a, for lack of better word, simpler glitter polish.

 

So, that's it for this post.  These polishes are all available for purchase at jiorcouture.com, and they're on sale because they're going to be retiring this week!  If you're interested, hurry over to the shop!  There are three other great-looking polishes in this collection.

What are your favorite Christmas polishes?  Do you ever miss pairing traditional Christmas colors together throughout the spring and summer?  Let me know in the comments!