Holiday Favorites - Nail Polish Edition

A large part of the holiday season for me is color. You see it in the Thanksgiving meal you'll be munching down on in a few days - cranberry reds, golden browns, and bright whites. It pops up again as we enter winter in the twinkling lights strung up on the trees outside, the warm colors in the house as you cozy up by the fire with a cup of tea, and the bangles and glow of New Years Eve.

Being me, one of my favorite ways to see holiday color is on the nails. Here are my top 10 holiday nail polishes broken down evenly into base colors and glitter polishes. I'm not a huge fan of glitter polish during the year, but the holiday season is when you should pull out all the stops.

Bring in the Base...

 Sinful Colors - Under 18 

 Perfect for the Christmas season, this is a shimmery red-orange color. It is the only base color that I'd recommend three solid coats, but is totally worth it once dry. The best part - you can find it at Walgreens for $1.99!

 O.P.I. - Casino Royale 

 From the new Skyfall collection, Casino Royale reminds me of cozy sweaters. It falls somewhere between cranberry and merlot and is perfectly flat (no shimmer, glitter, or any of that jazz).

Butter London - British Racing Green

 This is by far my ultimate favorite color this season. This deep green has the tiniest flecks of shimmer that show up in the bottle as silver, but when applied to then nail only reflect the light - it's pretty awesome. Stay tuned for a holiday nail tutorial with this color coming soon!

Essie - Bobbing for Baubles 

 Bobbing for Baubles is from the Essie 2011 Winter Collection and is a deep navy blue - almost black. It's a great flat neutral with a little hint of fun. Perfect for any winter day.

O.P.I. - Moonraker 

Moonraker shows up much darker in the bottle than it does on the nail. It's a great silvery-gray with little specs of silver shimmer making it look metallic. My only problem with this color is that it can be a bit watery and needs a little bit of a careful application to make sure it doesn't come out streaky. That being said, the color payoff is totally worth the extra time. 

And onto the Glitter! 

 Milani - Jewel FX Lavender 

This glitter polish, like the rest of the Milani glitters to follow, are a colored glitter floating in a clear base making them a perfect top coat or a blinged out accent nail when built up. Lavender is made up of larger hexagonal glitter pieces and smaller round pieces, but all reflect the light brilliantly.

Milani - Red 

Like its friend above, Red's glitter floats in clear polish making it very multi-purpose. Unlike its friend above, Red is only made up of large, hexagonal pieces of glitter that are much easier to build up on their own and can cover your nail almost completely in three coats. Awesome.

Milani - Gold

Not much more to say about Milani polishes at this point, but this gold color is amazing. It is my favorite glitter polish this season as I am loving metallics in general. This will also be showing up in a tutorial soon - stay tuned!

Orly - Mermaid Tale 

Mermaid Tale comes from the new Orly Flash Glam FX collection that they are beginning to release. It's a mix of different sized pieces of glitter that are green, silver, and slightly blue-toned making the color very multi-dimensional.

O.P.I. - Designer...de Better! 

This O.P.I. color comes from last year's holiday Muppet collection. It caught my eye as it falls somewhere between glitter and shimmer. It can totally hold its own as the glitter is suspended in a gold polish. The glitter itself is silver, gold, and rose gold making the overall color of the polish change depending on the lighting. I absolutely love this color!


Although these are my favorite holiday colors for the 2012 season, I have yet to fully explore the individual holiday collections released by each of the brands. So far, the China Glaze Holiday Joy collection seems to be the most interesting I've seen.