Halloween Part 2

One set of Halloween nails wasn't enough. I had a Halloween party to go to last weekend, and since I kind of threw my costume together, I decided that I needed to put a lot of effort into my nails.

I've been waiting to use this one Halloween glitter polish for AGES. It was in my Introductory Grab Bag from Llarowe, but of course I got it last January. I've been waiting for so long to break it out, and I'm so happy that I didn't forget about it.

Are you ready for all this Halloween goodness?

BAM. Does it get anymore Halloween-y? My Halloween glitter is Naild' It Candy Corn. I liked the polish a lot, but I thought the copper glitter overpowered a lot of the classic Halloween colors. It had orange, yellow, black, and white mini-hexes with a few black and white bars. I didn't even know about the big white hexes until one showed up on my brush. I tried to dig for another big hex glitter, but I never found one. Even though the copper glitter was the main focus, everything is forgiven because it's SO SHINY! The shine doesn't come out great in my pictures, but trust me, I could look at my glitter nails at different angles for a solid five minutes. 

All of the orange polish is OPI A Roll in the Hague and the black polish is Essie Licorice. I free-handed the spider web and the half moon with a nail art brush, and then I tried the sugar-spun technique on my pinkie. I really loved this effect, but I think it could have come out a lot better if I had a bit more patience and waited the full 10 minutes before trying to put the black on my nail. 

Last but not least, I valiantly tried to stamp again. Needless to say, it didn't work out. I had this cute little Winstonia stamp that said Boo! but after a few terrible attempts, I replaced it with the half moon and a little black rhinestone that I attatched with nail glue. I topped everything off with a coat of Sally Hansen Dries Instantly (two coats on the glitter), and I was ready to party. 

Halloween Part 1

It's that time of year again, and I decided to celebrate one of my favorite holidays with a little blood splatter.

Splatter nails are a ton of fun and super easy to do. I started with two coats of Revlon Elegant. On a piece of tin foil, I dabbed out a bit of Revlon Vintage. I grabbed my handy-dandy straw and made sure I got a nice goop of nail polish on the end (that's a technical term). Just blow the polish onto your nail, and redo the process until you're done! I finished this off with China Glaze Matte Magic when the shiny just wasn't working for me. 

Cleanup, however, is not quite so easy. The polish likes to blow everywhere and every shade of red loves to stain my nails. I was silly, and I forgot to put tape or Vaseline or glue around my nails to help with the mess. Instead, I was left to clean up all the stray polish with cotton balls and Q-tips.

Cleanup took a while, but I think it was worth it. I got a TON of compliments on these nails (especially from my friends who watch Dexter), and I think they were perfect for Halloween without being too in-your-face. 

My Q.U.E.E.N.

Can we talk about Janelle Monae real quick? Because damn. She's pretty much my idol. I can't even explain how great I think she is.

Her new album is pretty fantastic, and I got to go her concert two weeks ago, so of course I did some Janelle Monae inspired nails. Any fan would probably think black and white, maybe tuxedo nails, but I decided to base my nails off of her hands in the video for Dance Apocalyptic.

I seriously can't listen to that song without dancing.

Yellow nails + gold rings = DOTTING GALORE.

I don't know why I don't use my dotting tools more because they're SO MUCH FUN. I used a base of Sally Hansen Lightening and dotted on various sizes of Revlon Golden. I put various colored dots on top of three gold dots to create the "rings." I had meant to go over it with Sephora by OPI's Only Gold For Me Top Coat, but the glitter payoff was awful. Seriously, I got practically zero glitter on my nails, so I ended up pouring some out and placing the little gold hex glitters on top of the smaller gold polish dots. I really like how it turned out. 

As per usual, it's topped off with Sally Hansen Dries Instantly. This turned out to be one of my favorite manicures I've ever done; it had so much pop and it was pretty easy. 

QUITTERS NEVER WIN

It's been a while. And by a while, I mean about five full months since I last posted. I'm still getting the hang of this blogging thing, and hopefully I'll get more consistent. On the plus side, I figured out how to transfer my questionable phone photos (sorry, don't own a decent camera) to my computer without emailing myself. Yay! That should make the blogging process a bit easier.

I've done my nails a few times in the last month, but they're all getting uploaded today. First, I had this cloud theme going. Basically, I had a new light blue polish that I wanted to try out, and I thought, "Why not try to get better at stamping?" I failed on so many accounts.

My intention was to do a hand of clouds with a plain accent nails, but it ended up the other way around. Stamping is hard. Fail #1.

Light blue is one of my favorite colors to have on my nails. I had the perfect one, but it broke in my shoe when I had it packed in a suitcase. I've been shopping around for a replacement blue for ages, and I've picked up a few different shades here and there. I meant to use Sally Hansen Blue-Away for my base, but I GRABBED THE WRONG BLUE. Fail #2. 

I ended up using Salon Perfect Baby Blue as my base and my stamping polish. The white is OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls, and I managed to work in Blue-Away by wiping most of the polish of the brush and doing a very sparse coat on the blue nails. The cloud pattern is Winstonia plate W113. 

After a few tries at stamping, I was finally happy-ish with the results when I ACCIDENTALLY STABBED THE MY MIDDLE FINGER WITH THE CORNER OF MY THUMB NAIL. Fail #3. 

I just could not catch a break with this silly stamping, so I just let it be, covered it with some Sally Hansen Dries Instantly, and pretended like bump in my middle nail didn't bother me. (Spoiler alert: It bothered me.)

Clouds aren't supposed to be even in the sky anyway. That's why they're so lopsided--I wanted to be more realistic. That works, right?