Hallowe'en Graveyard Nails & Purple Gradient

I don't do Hallowe'en, but I'd seen lots of nails like this recently and wanted to do some too!

I started with 4 purple polishes and made a gradient. I used Barry M Black Currant and Blackberry, Jacava Holbein Place and Barry M Fondant, to take it from an almost-black purple to a pale lilac. I started with a base of Jacava Holbein Place, and then sponged on the gradient.

I really like how this came out, and I wore this on its own for a day, with topcoat to make it glossy. 

The cleanup round the cuticles was quite awkward - that Barry M Black Currant again! I still liked this though.

I then tried this matte, just to see what it was like. I like this too!

I then used a Barry M nail art pen to freehand a tree and some gravestones. 

I like the contrast of the black against the sort of sunset sky, and the glossy against the matte. 

I wish Black Currant wasn't so messy round the edges though!

 

 
 

Hallowe'en 2 - Bleeding Zombie Fingers!

About two months ago, I saw this pack of temporary tattoo things in Accessorize, and snapped them up! Finally this week I got the chance to use them.

These were £4 for a pack of 14. As you can see, there are a variety of sizes of dripping blood designs. The instructions are simple - you peel off the covering plastic, place them on the fingers, press down with a wet piece of fabric or kitchen roll and then peel off the paper.

First I painted my nails - I started with a base of Barry M Vanilla, and then sponged over a whole variety of splodges, all with Barry M colours. I used Mustard, Black, Grey, Berry Ice Cream and Blackberry, in varying amounts for that bruised and battered effect.  I then added a coat of Barry M Matte Topcoat. 

The transfers came out looking really shiny and blood-like, which I think looked fab! I loved how gory these look!

I like how the slightly gluey bits where they touch my cuticles in places actually make them look more realistic. 

I had hoped to keep them on all night and then wear them for work tomorrow, but sadly, the shiny finish was a bit sticky, and they got quite grubby rubbing against clothes and so on. I think if you were at a party or something, and only handling drinks, then you'd be fine, but these don't last overnight!

Still, I was pretty pleased with this look! 

 

Hallowe'en Cobwebs and Other Spooky Stuff!

It's time for Hallowe'en nails! Everyone is doing them, so I thought I'd join in. 

Today I've done a variety of designs. My starting point was with the Cobweb Nail Stencils from She Sells Seashells which I bought recently. You can buy them here.  I used a couple, with two different combinations of colours. 

On my ring finger is two coats of OPI Push and Shove as a silver base, and then OPI 4 in the Morning combined with the stencil. On my middle finger is a base of 3 coats of Barry M Rockstar, with 4 in the Morning.  Rockstar is the black one from the Glitterati collection, and is a sheer black polish filled with silvery holo glitter that shows all sorts of colours. It's really sparkly!

On my little finger I had a base of OPI 4 in the Morning, and was making a pretty, geometric design using orange glequins. But then half way through I accidentally caught the edge of the pot and tipped them everywhere, so instead it's a thick pile of glitter in a random not-pattern!

On my index finger I have two coats of Essence Flashy Pumpkin, which is a fabulous neon orange that's lovely and glossy and opaque. I used a Barry M Nail Art Pen to draw a simple spider, and added black sparkly eyes with glequins. Apparently I had forgotten that spiders are meant to have 8 legs! Oh well. My spider is so vicious that she lost two legs in combat. 

On my thumb is two coats of OPI 4 in the Morning and a nail charm from She Sells Seashells. I just love this skeletal hand! I love the combination of shiny gold, sparkly diamante, and a gory subject. Lovely.  On a practical note, this charm is curved at the back so it sits really comfortably on the nail, and although it's fairly raised up from the nail, it doesn't have any rough edges or odd bits that catch. It stuck down perfectly easily with a couple of dots of nail glue. 

 
I never thought my battered old shed would be seen on my blog, but I thought it suited the nails! 

I quite like how these turned out! I didn't want to do cobwebs on every nail, as there are only ten on the sheet, and I wanted to keep some for next time too!

An InLinkz Link-up

Opi Rock Goddess - Hallowe'en 2013 Set

I'm a sucker for packaging! I saw this set in my local shop the other day and bought it (about £9 I think) without reading any reviews online, which was a bit of a mistake!

I like the packaging(although apparently I can't take a decent photo of it!), and the free bracelet!


These are the polishes. Yellowpalooza, Stand in Lime for Days, Rolling Bones and The Drummer is Hot.

The Drummer is Hot is almost identical to Roll in the Hague, from the Holland collection (although the formula is not as good - more on that later.)

Stand in Lime for Days is almost identical to Fiercely Fiona from the Shrek collection (again, with a less impressive formula).

The formula on these is poor! REALLY poor. The yellow and the green are very thin and streaky, and took at least three coats to be anywhere near acceptable. These coats then just failed to dry.  Rolling Bones is quite pretty, but again is very very thin and watery, so took at least 3-4 coats to be wearable.  The Drummer is Hot isn't too bad, two coats was enough, but it wasn't anywhere near as good as Roll in the Hague, and was still a bit streaky.

One coat - streaky!

Two coats of The Drummer is Hot (it is still streaky, although you can't really see that here) and three coats of all the others.

I did two manis with these, both of which failed completely. One was a tape mani with colour blocking - but the colours were so sheer that they needed so many coats that they just never dried properly, so the tape lifted up half the colour.  The other also just didn't dry, so it dented and smeared about an hour after I finished it. After that, I gave up.

I will wear the bracelet, and I'll probably keep the orange and the grey, but the yellow and the green I think I will pour away so that I can use the bottles for something else. They're THAT bad!

You can buy this set in stores and online for about £10 if you really want to. Or I know where you can get a barely used second hand set for cheap! Lol.

Hallowe'en Zombie Corpse Nails

A few days ago I saw this wonderful mani at The Nail Network, and decided I wanted to have a go myself. So here is my zombie corpse dripping blood mani!

First I painted a coat of Nails Inc Colville Mews, a pale whitish nude, as a base. Then I sponged (my first attempt at sponging!) what was intended to look like dead or bruised flesh all over them. I used Barry M Yellow (my bruises always have tonnes of yellow round the edges) and a blend of Barry M Dusky Mauve and Berry Ice Cream. This ended up being a lot more yellow than I had intended, but I decided to carry on anyway. I added a matte topcoat (Rimmel Pro Matte Topcoat) for the really dead look.

Then when this was really dry, I freehanded the blood dribbles using Barry M Raspberry, a dotting tool and the polish brush.  

The blood dribbles took quite a while to dry, and it took a lot of strength not to cave and use Seche Vite on top. I'm glad I didn't, because I think the contrast between matte and shiny makes a difference to this look.

I'm quite pleased with how this turned out, especially with it being my first attempt at sponging. I'm a bit horrified at how dry and untidy my cuticles look AGAIN! I think I need to do something about the lighting and or my eyesight, because I couldn't see this until after I'd taken the photos.

Zombie Nails!

So, I went over my pretty pink manicure from yesterday with Bourjois Lime Catwalk and a striper pen, and ended up with this:

I taped off the ends (and wasn't careful about making them even, or all facing the same way) and painted one coat of the lime. This is a colour I don't think I'd choose to wear on its own, but I think it's a good colour for what I wanted today. I like greens, but I tend to prefer dark, sparkly greens for actually wearing.

Anyway. Once the green was dry, I painted on the stitches with the black nail art pen (it was Andrea Fulerton's Dot & Flick). I was worried that I'd find the right hand really hard to do, but it actually turned out more even than the left! Once these were dry, I did a coat of Seche Vite to seal it all. Unfortunately, the SV caused the stitches to melt a bit and make a bit of a smear. Oh well, I don't suppose anyone will be looking too closely. It annoyed me though.

I'm also disappointed with how dry my cuticles look in every photo these days! I am being very good to them, I'm covering them in hand cream and in neem oil, and when I look at them with my eyes, they look fine. Then I take a photo and they look dreadful!  So I'm wondering whether it's my eyes... I hope not!  Again though, I suppose nobody's going to be looking THAT closely. I just wish I had the perfectly clean finish that the other nail bloggers have.