12 Days of Christmas Nails!! Day 1: a-England Excalibur (new) + Shimmer Elsa

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Hi everyone!  A few days ago I mentioned something I had planned for December that I was pretty excited for, and I thought I'd launch it today.  Last year I had a handful of polishes that reminded me only of Christmas and I didn't give myself a chance to play with them but this year I'm changing all that. :)  So, I present to you LLPT's 12 Days of Christmas Nails!  The idea is fairly self explanatory.  I'll feature twelve different holiday-ish nail looks before Christmas Day finally hits.  We'll see how far I actually make it but I have some fun stuff I want to share, so I'll just get started, with 12 posts before the 25th being the end goal :)

I'm usually very classic in my choices for day to day polishes but I let myself get a little wild and crazy (comparatively speaking) for the holidays, which are, in part, about adding a little more shimmer and sparkle to your wardrobe.  Today I decided to pair two of my favorite indie companies, a-England and Shimmer, in a sponge tip mani.  I used the new a-England Excalibur, a buttery champagne gold, as my base, and Shimmer Elsa, a champagne gold, cerulean, and ruby red glitter, for my tips.

A few words about Shimmer, since I just named them as a favorite yet never featured one on la blog-- I've long been an admirer of this line of elegant, saturated glitters, from their gorgeous versatility to the labeling to the idea behind the polishes (each glitter is inspired by the creator's friends and family... that makes for some seriously awesome energy!) but I've never treated myself to any.  A dear friend gifted me with a few of them a while back and since I received them, I've pulled the bottles out just to gawk at them and to play with different color combinations.  Needless to say, I'm stoked to finally have some of these beauties in my stash and I'm really excited to be wearing one for the first time.  Thank you, dear friend (you know who you are ♥)!

I've been in loooove with a-England since the first stroke of Briar Rose.  It's another brand with great energy, and they just have the most amazing formulas and out of this world gorgeous colors.  I used two coats of Excalibur, then used a makeup sponge to dab Elsa onto my tips.  I finished with two layers of topcoat.  I love how festively elegant these two look together.  Shimmers are so perfect for adding a special accent.

The awesome thing is that all a-England polishes are on special for $9 each through color4nails.com in honor of the Ballerina collection launch.  So now's a good time to grab a few you've had our eyes on! 

Shimmer polishes are available by contacting the shop owner here.

And that's it!  I'm trying to convince my Baby Beau to be my new blogging lap buddy but he's too preoccupied with the novelty of being able to nap in every room in the house, which wasn't the case when Sal was with us.  Certain doors had to be kept closed but now he's got free reign so he's obsessed with one particular room, lol.

As always, thank you for reading, have a loverly day, and stay warm :) We got down to 16 degrees last night ☼

*contains press sample(s)