Manic.Monday: Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

It's December and it's officially not just countdown to Christmas, but it's also winter time. Throughout this month you'll notice a theme to the Manic.Monday posts - they are all related to winter in one way or another and we start off with a real cracker (see what I did there...) from Nails Inc, it's the Kensington Church Street Snowflake Effect nail polish (£10.80). This is a limited edition polish, inspired by cold and beautiful snowy winter days. It's a clear polish with dense glitter and sequins in different shapes and sizes, that make your nails look as if they have a light dusting of newly fallen snow on them.

Since the polish is so rich in glitter and sequins, you could probably wear it on its own, if you build it up with several coats, but for me this should be used as a top coat over a base shade of your choice to really enhance the beautiful effect. In it's consistency it's exactly like the usual Nails Inc formula and it has an average sized brush of good quality. For glitter polishes this could normally be an issue since if the brush isn't wide enough you might end up with the glitter not being distributed very evenly. In this case, you don't have to worry about that since the polish is absolutely packed with the particles and you get an even coat without any effort - just like you would expect from a quality brand like Nails Inc.

The polish is very fast drying so if you wanted to use more than one coat for a thick, layered blizzard effect you can create that in less than 5 mins, however I find that just one coat is enough to create a lovely crisp frosty effect, and in the photos I've used only one coat of Snowflake on top of 2 coats of a base shade. Unlike a lot of effect polishes this will stand out even more if you use a high shine top coat, although I've chosen not to do that in the photos.

As you can see I've tested this using different base shades that I thought would be appropriate for winter, Christmas and parties using both plain opaque shades and metallics, and I really think it works equally well on all of them.

Kensington Church Street Snowflake effect - in artificial light

Kensington Church Street Snowflake effect - in natural light

Glitter polishes can be a complete nightmare to remove, and while this isn't super easy, it's not too bad either and personally I think that just using one coat of this makes removing it easier.

I can't think of anything more seasonal and it's so easy to create this stunning effect, and I'm planning on trying this next with silver and emerald green base shades. I know we're only 2 days into December, but I know already that this is going to be my favourite look for winter. You will find that it's sold out in the Nails Inc on line store, however you can find a Snowflake gift set at Look Fantastic and probably even in some Boots stores and Nails Inc nail bars. Don't give up the search though - this gorgeous polish is definitely worth it.