Halloween mani #10 – Glam Black Widow!

Hi everyone! This post was supposed to go up last night, but my photos wouldn’t download off my phone, so there will be two posts today! Let’s jump into the first one, this deadly spider inspired look:

OPI’s Color So Hot It Berns, Zoya’s Storm

I wanted to do something with deadly-looking colors, so I chose to use the black widow spider’s red and black color scheme. I used a base of Color So hot It Berns, although I really need a new red – this one is a bit sheer and takes forever to dry (I dinged two nails even after waiting 15 minutes), but I got it for free a few years ago and I hardly ever use red, so I always forget to try a new one. Anyway, when that was dry, I applied a piece of washi tape horizontally across the nail then painted on a layer of Storm.

I looooove these gold spider charms! I got them last year but forgot to use them for Halloween, and I’ve kind of just been saving them since. I don’t usually like anything so big or chunky on my nails, but these are super awesome and glam!

Okay, guys – four manis left and counting! See you all tomorrow with something a little more complex. Thanks for reading – A x

Halloween Mani #9 – Sparkly Drips!

Hi everyone! Today’s mani was one of the quickest I’ve ever done – thank God for nail decals!

For the base color, I used two coats of Skull & Glossbones, a dirty light gray from OPI’s 2012 On Stranger Tides collection. I really love this color – the faint green tinge gives it a spooky feel, so it’s perfect for Halloween manicures. The formula is pretty good, too – if you’re careful, you can usually get away with only two coats, which is pretty great for such a light color.

For the drips, I wanted to to something a little jazzier than my all-creme version last year, so after I applied my What’s Up Nails drip decals – which also saved me a ton of time, since last year I hand-painted the drips – I quickly applied two thick layers of Orly’s Here Comes Trouble (HCT), an acid green glitter. HCT has a sheer base filled with green micro glitter and larger, scattered hex glitter. It’s a pretty opaque glitter, but definitely needed two coats to make sure there were no sheer areas. After painting on the two coats, I quickly but carefully peeled each decal off, then left about 20 minutes for it to fully dry because of the heavy coats.

I loooove how this turned out! I will never get tired of oozy drip nails for Halloween, so don’t be surprised if you see them next year, too! Thanks for reading! I’ll be back with mani #11 tomorrow, see ya then – A x

Halloween Mani #8: Halloween Bubbles!

Hello lovely readers! We’re in the home stretch leading up to Halloween, so I’m gonna have nail posts probably every day this week. Savor that, because after this month I probably won’t post very much, ha – I don’t know how some nail bloggers do so many posts/manis every single month! It’s too much for someone as lazy as me, even though I do love nail art. Today’s nail art is a very fun look that actually took me no time at all to do:

I used two easy coats of Zoya’s Loredana, a dark gray matte that was recently re-released. It’s gorgeous, with its silver flecks, and since it’s matte, it dried in a flash. Score. When that was dry, I used a medium dotting tool to apply a few dots around the side of each nail with Arizona, followed by Treble Maker and Anime-zing Color. Then I used a smeller dotting tool to fill in the space with multicolored dots in a rough curved shape.

Ahhh sorry, I didn’t see the chip on my pinkie when I was taking pics!

It still looked like it needed a little something, so I went back in and put a few small black dots in the empty spaces. I thought this mani was really fun – the gray under the traditional orange/green/purple makes it less cutesy, but still cute, if that makes sense? Also, I didn’t use top coat or anything, but all these polishes dried really quickly so it was a pretty fast mani (except for one or two dots that got a ding, but that’s because I’m impatient).

See that gorgeous matte shimmer?

Tomorrow starts the week leading up to Halloween! Are you excited? Do you have your costume prepared? I definitely do not – as much as I love and anticipate Halloween, I think because I decorated so early (mid-September) and because I’ve been so busy (October is always a super busy month, and my family was just in town for a week), the rest of October really snuck up on me. I think I’m gonna have to go with something that’s more makeup based rather than costume based, since I’ve run out of time and have no more weekends to shop! I’m thinking of doing a cute alien look, but we’ll see. Anyway, thanks for reading! I’ll have another post up tomorrow, see ya then – A x

Halloween Mani #7: Spooky Gradient!

Hi lovlies! This is going to be another lightning-quick post as I just got home from a Jimmy Buffet concert at the Hollywood Bowl with my folks and I’m about to go to sleep for DISNEYLAND tomorrow! I’ll have a weekend round up at some point, but since it’s getting to be the end of the month, I want to pump out as many posts as I can so I make my goal of 13 Halloween manis. So this short and sweet post is about my gradient nails!

I loooove China Glaze’s Harvest Moon. I mean:

Look how gorgeousssssss Harvest Moon is!

It’s from their 2012(? no time to Google!) Hunger Games collection, which I hated at first but now I own almost all the colors, and this is one of my favs – I adore a burnt orange, and this one is a gorgeous, reflective foil, to boot! I did a rough gradient (using my usual damp sponge routine but didn’t take too much care to ensure a smooth, even gradient to keep it ~*spooky*~), and I think the deeper orange makes this a really chic look as opposed to the more kitschy or cutesy Halloween manis that pop up a lot (sometimes even my own designs)!

I also added an accent glitter nail on my pinkie – the copper doesn’t quite match, but it looks pretty close in real life. It’s really a struggle for me to keep the same design on all my fingers, it’s like nail polish ADD or something!

P.S. this is the mani that cracked 400 followers on IG for me! This is very exciting – I know I’ll never be a “big” nail blogger, but seeing my number grow higher and higher during the less-than-a-year I’ve been putting my designs on Instagram has been really lovely and affirming. I don’t do anything too complex, but I appreciate everyone who likes checking out what I keep coming up with. If you’re one of my IG followers, thank you so much for your support! And doubly thanks since you’re taking time to read my blog post, and I know the nail game is mostly IG now, so it’s really swell that you want to read some words written by little ol’ me. Thanks so much, and I’ll see you in a day or two with my next mani! – A x

Halloween mani #6: Pointy & Chic!

Hi everyone! This is going to be a super quick, drive-by post today, sorry about that! This look is one of my favorites, though:

I used a basic glossy black, Sinful Colors’ Black on Black (which is goopy and weird even though I just bought it; I should really scoop up China Glaze’s Liquid Leather), then when the top coat had fully dried, I used washi tape to create sharp, skinny points on each nail.

For the points themselves, I used China Glaze’s But Of Corpse, one of their textured polishes from last Halloween’s collection. I loooove this polish! Not only is the name obviously amazing, but the texture is very subtle – so subtle that it was difficult to capture on camera, in fact – but I liked that it was just a little something extra.

Tried my best to show the texture of But Of Corpse.

I really loved the edgy vibe this color gave the mani – it’s a medium, slightly washed out green (very Frankenstein’s monster!) with speckles of black, which looks cool and creepy enough on its own, but along with the sharp black it looks very spookily chic, indeed! I imagine a chic Disney villain like Maleficient would rock the hell out of this mani!

I’ll have a bunch of posts up in the next week as I desperately try to complete all 13 looks before Halloween, so there’ll be a lot of activity in the next few days. I hope you like what I’m cooking up! Thanks for reading, see you next time – A x