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

Julep Halloween Cat Tutorial

I was contacted by Julep asking if I'd like to participate in their Halloween event. It sounded fun so I said sure!

The first part is that they sent me photo tutorial to recreate. This tutorial is a blogger exclusive and pretty easy to follow. They are also doing a Halloween nail art contest so be sure to check out their Instagram for details on that :)

Here's my interpretation.

I used LynBDesigns Time And Relative Dimension in Space as the background plus acrylic paint. I don't actually own any  Julep polishes which I was told was fine.

Anyway, here's the tutorial below! It was easy to follow, though my cat looks a bit strange. Blame that on user error ;) Be sure to check out some of Julep's new nail polish colors as well.

Halloween Nails: ERMAHGERD Happy Candy Corn

Okay so there's totally a reason for the silly title!

Smitten Polish ERMAHGERD CANDY CORMS is my annual Halloween/fall polish. I save it for this time each year. I don't have any other holiday polishes so it's sorta special. 

I think this is my 3rd year using this polish and suprisingly, I've never paired it with candy corns! So I decided to this year.

The purple base color I used here is Sinful Colors Amethyst while the candy corn is entirely acrylic paint.

This little cutie was inspired by the talented @lacquer_daze on Instagram.

Monday Mani: Decals using Water Marble Decals

Today's Monday Mani theme is decals. It's such a great theme because they are SOOOO many things you can do.

I decided to go with water marble decals which seem to be popular lately. The idea is that you do your regular water marble.

Instead of dunking your finger in, you let it dry for a long time (I did about an hour I think) and gently lift it out, letting it dry on paper towel.

Then you can cut the decal and apply it to a semi sticky base on your nail.

I see tons of advantages to this: less waste (I used one go for 4 nails), less mess, time saver (I marbled more nap time and finished my nails during nap), and more accurate (you can redo the marble over and over again without redoing your whole nail plus you can cut the exact part you want to use instead of hoping you're dunking right!).

Onto the mani!

I used China Glaze Kalahari Kiss as the base for my thumb, ring, and pinkie. I also used it along with Zoya Pepper and O.P.I. Chop-sticking to My Story for the water marble decal.

The brown glitter is Hits Glitter Forte 389 Brown.

Fall Colors: Revlon Autumn Spice & China Glaze Riveting

When I thought about fall mani ideas, these two colors seemed perfect!

I kept it simple and used two coats each of China Glaze Riveting and Revlon Autumn Spice plus some tiny gold studs.