Stitched Ghost

This came out so cute! I took the idea from @nailsbycolette and just used a different base color for my designs. I like that it is a weird modified french tip but still incorporates the spirit of Halloween, and that her take on ghosts were adorable! I spent a long time trying to recreate a cute-yet-appropriate looking ghost. I think I got it. Although my ghost has a slight weight problem.

Colors:
~ Grey sparkle: Emily de Molly – Shadow on the Moon
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
~ Light grey: Formula X – Delightful
~ Grey: WOW – #333

You can’t really see, but my thumb has both a bigger sheet ghost and a smaller baby sheet ghost. Score one for me! Maybe I should have broken my years-long rule and posted my thumbnail as well, just this once. Hope you enjoyed 🙂

Ghosts and Rose

The inspiration for this was an actual work of art that I found when searching for “ghost paintings” because I was tired of the same old nail art ghosts. The painting looked incredible, but I have to admit I did not do a good job translating it onto my nails. They look creepy, but they are not identifiably ghosts. And the spacing for the rose to be held in arms is all wrong. For all that, this took quite a bit of time (multiple layers of dry-marbling shades of grey + stamping + free handing a rose). Win some, loose some! The art was done by Fluke Lady.

Colors:
~ Light grey: Zoya – Dove
~ Grey: WOW #333
~ Dark grey: Bordeau – #212
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Green: Zoya – Shawn
~ Red: Zoya – Sooki
~ Dark red: OPI – All I want for Christmas (is OPI)
~ Stamp: Nicole Diary – L26

I also forgot to take photos of these nails on my camera, likely because I did them the same day as my bright spider webs from last week. Oops! Enjoy anyway :-p

Shadow Ghosts

I got the idea to use a smush marble as the base for halloween nails with ghosts over them from @bettinanails, and I just couldn’t resist! Between the dark and stormy base and the cute/spooky ghosts, I rather love how this came out! I do wish I had used one shade lighter of a grey so you could see the smush contrasting with the black, but it still worked.

Colors:
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Dark grey: WOW – #333
~ Light grey: Formula X – Delightful
~ White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White

It took longer to make, dry, and transfer (not to mention clean up) the smush marble parts of the design than it did to make the ghosts. Worth it anyway. Enjoy!

Haunting Purple

I could not decide what manicures to do for halloween. I felt like everything was either already done, overdone in general, too hard, or too easy. Then I found a bunch of purple gradient creepy mansion manicures and I was sold. The unifying theme was the beautiful purple gradients and the spooky setting, so off I went! My resulting manicure is 50% stamped and 50% freehand.

Colors:
~ Light purple: Zoya – Abby
~ Purple: Zoya – Landon
~ Dark purple: Zoya – Lael
~ Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
~ Stamps: UC – Lovely Leaves 02, BM – 213, 223, 305

Happy Halloween, and I hope you enjoyed! No candy corn manicures this year, maybe I will throw some in next year. Who knows. Now on to fall, and random dead things, yay!

Nerdtastic Tuesday: Pacman

I know I’m skipping in and out with nerdy posts on Tuesdays…I think if I happen to have one in stock, I’ll just post it on a Tuesday :-p. Today’s nerdy Tuesday post is everyone’s favorite dot muncher…pacman!

Unfortunately, while my ghosts are fairly awesome, my pacman is a bit anemic. Oops. Thats what I get for starting with a yellow nail and not a black nail! Anyway, it just makes it easier for those ghosts eyeing him to get their chance. Nom nom nom!

Colors

• Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
• White: Zoya – Purity
• Grey: Maybelline – Bare Escape
• Red: Pure Ice – Siren
• Yellow: Spoiled – Mind Your Own Beeswax
• Blue: Zoya – Rocky
• Pink: Sinful Colors – Pink Forever
• Dark blue: Sinful Colors – Endless Blue

Hope you enjoyed! The rest of this week will be non nerd posts. But still awesome.

Mummy Attack!

This is my favorite Halloween mani yet. It is cool, frightening, and not terribly bloody. Also, it GLOWS. IN THE DARK. How awesome is that?

The base for this mani is the best glow in the dark polish ever, Dayglow by Serum No5. Day glow really does glow. I kept making little tents out of my hand to stare at the glowing wonderfulness! The polish (unfortunately) takes 3 thin coats to be opaque, dries very slowly, and dries to a somewhat matte finish. However, the last two issues are taken care of with quick dry top coat!

I hand-painted on lots of thick black lines (mummies), the outline of a ghost, and complicated teeth. This mani took over an hour and a half to put together (mostly due to all the darn straight lines) but WOW was it worth it! I must give credit to my boyfriend though…he suggested vampire when I couldn’t figure out what to do with my thumb. That might be my favorite finger!

It was a little hard to fall asleep at night with these creepy nails staring back at me in the darkness of my room…

Colors

• Yellow: Serum No5 – Dayglow
• Black: Julie G – Black Sheep
• Red: Zoya – Isla

SO MUCH FUN. And happy Halloween! What did you guys have on your nails? And which is your favorite nail?

All Hallows Eve

I kept seeing photos of the new Incoco nail strips for halloween, and decided to do my favorites by hand! Only, I had to make them MORE colorful. So, I present the wonderfully glittery and creepy All Hallows Eve!

I started by sponging on a base of orange-red-purple (using all super glittery textured polishes) to recreate the creepy sunset gradient of the incoco nails.

I then stamped a devil (thumb) and two spooky houses onto my nails from Bundle Monster. Unfortunately, the houses didn’t stamp all that well. I then added bats and crosses by hand.

I really think this came out cool! The colors make it spooky, and the contrast between the misty houses (I’m going to pretend the fact that they are not terribly distinct was intentional) and the dark ground and bats is suitably halloween-y.

Colors

• Orange: Julie G – Tangerine Dream
• Red: Julie G – Hot Cinnamon
• Purple: Julie G – Sugar Plum Fairy
• Black: Julie G – Black Sheep
• Stamps: Bundle Monster – 305, 224

Hope you enjoyed! And stay tuned for my very best Halloween mani…tomorrow… *bwhahahaha*

~~~Reminder: Nail Art contest! Send me your nails! Creepy, cool, nerdy, anything! The contest ends Sunday 🙂 ~~~~~

Totoro!

I love anime, but only some anime. My favorite anime artist is Hayao Miyazaki. He has made many movies, including my favorites (Howl’s Moving Castle and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind are my top two). Unfortunately, I have no idea how to do Howl or Nausicaa nail art, but I do know how to do My Neighbor Totoro nails! So, I have placed some of the major spirits from Totoro on my nails.

On my pinky are the dust spirits, ring finger has the big totoro, middle finger has the baby totoro, pointer has the middle totoro, and my thumb has the scary cat-bus! If you have never seen the movie this makes no sense, but it is an adorable movie and I recommend it!

So yes, I am a nerdy in more than one dimension. Anyway. The base for these nails was Sinful Colors – Mint Apple, which was just a dream to apply. All details were done with a thin nail art brush or an unbent hairpin.

Colors:

• Green: Sinful Colors – Mint Apple
• Blue: Nail Art – Blue
• Grey: NYC – Sidewalker
• White: Sinful Colors – Snow me White
• Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black
• Copper: Zoya – Penny
• Yellow: Revlon – Electric
• Brown: Maybelline – Downtown Brown
• Pink: Revlon – Poppy

Enjoy! And go watch some amazing anime 🙂

Halloween Part 2: Pumpkins

This is going to be brief because I have a bad headache, and I’m in lab in the middle of running a gel. But mostly because I have a headache and want to go back to staring off into space.

I decided to make even cooler halloween nails, and here they are!

I’m going as a ghostbuster for halloween, so I figured the ghosts were appropriate!

As a side note, my internet in lab is much faster than my internet at home. Interesting.