A England Gradient Snowflakes

My first nail art of the new year! Well actually I did this mani about three weeks ago but haven't had any time to edit photos and write a post. I thought I was mostly prepared for the holidays but as usual I was wrong. Now that things have chilled out a little I am hoping to be more active on my blog!

This was the first time using my new A England Wuthering Heights and Cathy. I had swooned over photos of these polishes for months. Then I finally bought them and it still took a few weeks to try them out. Let me tell you, they did not disappoint! I'm still so, so in love. I had two different ideas for this mani, so I decided to try them both. 

First off I wanted to do a gradient with the two polishes. Then I stamped the snowflakes so they'd blend into the gradient. I wanted to do some gold snowflakes on top, so I first used these that I bought from AliExpress (I can't find the original wheel I bought, but this is has the same kind). They were large enough in size that they didn't lay flat on the nail and stiff enough that no amount of top coat was going to help. So I took the photos and then removed them.

Then I moved on with my second idea which was to just stamp gold snowflakes on. For these I used A England Holy Grail. Although I loved the look of the first one, this second one was a more wearable mani. It's been pretty gray and bleak so far this winter and we haven't had a lot of sun. I took the above photo in the literal 30 seconds of weak sunlight there were that day. You can glimpse a little of the pretty sparkle.

Which one do you like better?