Halloween Nails 2018: Old School Witches

For today's Halloween manicure, I went old school and dug into my stash (which is actually pretty small for someone who's been active in the nail polish community for 7+ years).

I used China Glaze Something's Brewing which is part of their Halloween 2015 collection along with China Glaze Light As Air which is part of the core collection but my bottle dates from 2012.

I love the juxtaposition of the soft feminine purple with the bold glitters. So cool!

I freehanded a witch's hat detail on my middle finger using colors that matched the glitter to bring the whole look together.

Halloween Nails 2018: Cute Ghosts

Today’s Halloween manicure uses the super cute stamps from MoYou London 53 again. I can’t help myself!

I used the advanced stamping technique for the ghosts.

My base coat is the gorgeous You’ll Move Mountains from Tonic Polish

Halloween Nails 2018: Zombie

For today's Halloween manicure, I went on the slightly gory side.

For my base, I used Dollish Polish Zombie Flesh. I first picked up this polish back in summer 2012. It still is as great of a polish years later.

Next I added red strips down my nails to represent blood. I used a red jelly polish here so it would seem more blood like.

Finally I added some black stitches. They don't have to be perfect :) I topped it all off with a fast dry top coat of course.

Halloween Nails 2018: Pastel Bat Nail Art

As much as I love to use traditional colors for holidays or certain times of the year, I also find it fun to use something unexpected!

For this Halloween manicure, I stuck to traditional black and purple. Except to change it up, I used a pastel purple! That purple combined with the adorable bat image makes this such a sweet manicure.

The products used are Glisten & Glow Mother Flora and Little Black Dress plus MoYou London Festive 53 which has a ton of adorable images for Halloween.

Halloween Nails 2018: Skulls

I picked up this stamping plate awhile ago and have been saving it for Halloween.

I was peeking around in my Helmer, trying to figure out which polish I wanted to pair with this plate when I found the perfect polish.

For the base of this manicure, I used OPI Skull and Glossbones. I stamped used Funky Fingers Dark Knight and the previously mentioned Born Pretty Store plate BP-146

Halloween Nails 2018: Spiderwebs and Spiders

There's certain times of the year that just really lend themselves sooo well to nail art, and October is one of them for me. So be prepared for a ton of different Halloween related polishes and nail art designs.

I picked up Girly Bits Put Your Strap On at Polish Con. It was part of the Polish Pickup June 2018 and was sold at the convention as part of the Polish Pickup overflow table with all proceeds going to charity. I actually picked this one up twice to look at it, so I totally knew I needed to get it when I picked it up the second time.
It's a gorgeous white semi-jelly based polish with tons of shimmer and flakies. I needed 3 coats for full opacity.

I used it as the base of my spiderweb and spider themed manicure. The webs are stamped from Festive Collection Plate 53 from MoYou London. I freehanded the spider using black nail polish and a small brush.

Halloween Nail Art: Black and Orange Swirl

How's everyone doing? We have a super busy week coming up including swim lessons starting today; surgery for the dog, vet appointment for the cat, and Halloween story time tomorrow; loads of errands on Wednesday; Trick or Treating on Friday; and T's second birthday on Saturday. Whew!!!!

Anyway, today's PAA Mani Monday is Black and Orange only so I combined Zoya Arizona and Storm to create this swirly mani. This technique was created by the fabulous Sveta Sanders. Check out her Instagram @sveta_sanders for a tutorial.

Halloween Nail Art: Leopard Print and Stripes

I love leopard print nail art! It's such an easy go to design for me and you can really have fun. I did some for 4th of July this year so decided to do a Halloween version! 

I used almost all OPI polishes for this mani: My Boyfriend Scales Walls, Chop-sticking to My Story, and Don't Mess With OPI. The black is my standard Wet n Wild Black Creme. I used nail vinyls from Nailvinyls.com for the striped nail. Everything is topped with Essie Matte About You

Bloody Splatter

Base: Wet n Wild Black Creme followed by Seche Vite to dry. Added Essie Matte About You on top.

Splatter: Zoya Isla and Zoya Sookie

Spiderwebs and Raindrops

I used a base of 2 coats of Rimmel Grey Matter and followed it up with one thick coat of Illamasqua Raindrops. I like the sorta stormy/glistening effect this created.

Then I freehanded spiderwebs using Barry M Silver Foil. The spider was done with Wet n Wild Black Creme and Zoya Isla for the eyes.

Pumpkin Skittles

Base: China Glaze Riveting

Art: Wet n Wild Black Creme

Matte Graveyard

I did some simple graveyard nails using all matte polishes.

Base China Glaze Stone Cold

Gravestone ManGlaze Fuggen Ugly

Trees Sinful Colors Leather Loose

Grass Sinful Colors Rise and Shine

Roses Layla Fire It Up

Details Sinful Colors Cold Leather

Ghostly Storm

Today's Nail Art October theme for the Instagram challenge I'm doing (#nailartoct) is Trick or Treat. However, I'm going to an apple orchard on Sunday, and my idea for that theme fits much better for the orchard so I switched. Instead I'm doing Sunday's theme: Ghosts.

Base: Zoya Storm (2 coats)

Stamps: Bundle Monster BM223 (ghosts) & BM305 (house)

Stamped with Rimmel French White Nail Tip Liner (a less opaque white to give a ghostly feel) and Barry M Gold Foil

Werewolf Nails X 2!

I have a bonus post for you today! You get two manis in one.

For work today, my husband decided to dress up as a werewolf and have fun along with his clients. He really surprised me by asking if I would help paint his nails! Whoo-hoo! Here's what I came up with.

Pretty good, right?! I started with a base coat of Essie Brooch the Subject. Then I sponged on Sinful Colors Nirvana, OPI Suzi Loves Cowboys, Rimmel Black Satin, Zoya Dove, and Butter London Bumster. I also purposely added some polish to make it seem like he had been digging in the dirt.

Here he is in his whole costume. My husband has thick curly hair so I helped it out a bit with some gel. I also dirtied up his face, neck, and arms with black eyeshadow and drew on his his nose. I even made the shirt he's wearing!

And for werewolf nails part 2, you have my nails for today! I don't have a Halloween party to go to, and I'm pretty uncomfortably pregnant at this point so I won't be dressing up. But that doesn't mean my nails can't have fun like always!

I used Girly Bits Howl at the Moon for this mani. The base is a sort of dark blue/purple jelly base and then the glitter is large/medium/small gold hexes and gold micro glitter.  I chose to wear this on its own rather than layer it because I like the different depths of glitter you get. I used 3 coats for this mani.

A-England Jane Eyre

Just a quick post for today.  For this mani, I used A-England Jane Eyre as my base coat. I used 2 coats, but you could get by with 1 thick coat.  As usual, this A-England polish applied wonderfully: good pigmentation, opaque in minimal coats, smooth, and not too thick or thin. On my accent finger, I applied a skull water decal.

Jane Eyre is part of A-England's Gothic Beauties collection. Most of them are black with a shimmer.  Jane Eyre has a purple shimmer to it that is most noticeable on my pinkie finger.  I have another Gothic Beauty that I'll show you later :)

Bloody nails

I decided it would be kinda fun to do some bloody nails. I haven't tried the drip method before so this would be a good way to try that too.

I started with a base coats of China Glaze Kalahari Kiss.  I needed 2 coats.

For the knife, I used Sinful Colors Slate for the blade and an accent of Wet n Wild Metallica to add a bit of depth. The handle is done with Rimmel Black Satin.

For the blood, I missed Zoya Sooki with Zoya Isla to give a bit of depth. When I painted on the blood, I wasn't too worried about being precise either since blood dripping isn't going to be perfect (not that I would know! Lol!). I really like how the texture of the blood turned out.

I love this mani! It's super perfect for Halloween. The cashier at McDonalds even noticed and said they were pretty o.O

Layla Softouch Fire It Up

I recently did a super amazing Halloween swap. It was the most fun I've had with a swap. We kept out group to 12 girls and went through Elfster. If you haven't used Elfster for your swaps, I highly recommend it! You can create groups for each of your swaps. Then add whatever you want to your wishlist. Next the admin of the swap group can start the swap and it randomly assigns names. Even the admin of the group doesn't know who has who which is fun! Your gift giver can also mark that they bought things off your wishlist, but you can't see that information so it's a huge surprise.

Anyway, we all had so much fun with our swapping that most of us went over our budgets, oops!

My gift giver gave me some great polishes that I'm going to try to work into my Halloween designs.

For today, I used 2 coats of Layla Softouch Fire It Up. It applied wonderfully and was super smooth going on. You could possibly use just one coat, but I tend to have a light hand when applying coats. Clean up was very nice too with almost not staining of the skin/cuticles which I normally get with such pigmented reds.  Finally I added some super cute stickers my gift giver also gave me.

Frankenstein's Monsters

Today's Halloween mani features two of Frankenstein's monsters, both the male and female version.  I was inspired by a few pins I saw on Pinterest.

My inspiration for the stitches is from here, and for the female monster the idea came from here.

The green is used is OPI Don't Mess With OPI. I love this green, and I think it's perfect to use for Frankenstein's monsters.

Boo! spider nails

I've got a bit more nail art for you today.  For the base coat, I used two coats of Essence Rich & Pretty. This is my first Essence polish, and I have to say I'm impressed. Great formula, love the brush, and it really does dry fast!

Then I added some nail art using Rimmel Black Satin and glitter with L.A. Girl Uninhibited.

31 Day Challenge: Day 29, Inspired by the Supernatural

Today's theme is Inspired By The Supernatural.

I started off with a base coat of Misa Toxic Seduction. I used two coats for this mani.  Toxic Seduction is a beautiful dark green with hints of teal with tons of shimmer.

I was just going to stamp on some ghosts, but the name Toxic Seduction inspired me to do this slime manicure. I used Sally Hansen Green With Envy for the slime.

This mani would be totally awesome for Halloween.

This last photo is a slightly awkward pose, but it shows the shimmer in Toxic Seduction nicely.

Check out some other manis inspired by the supernatural below.