Halloweek Spooktacular - The Final Chapter

I'm not going to lie, I really overextended myself this week. I decided to do this Spooktacular, came down with a terrible cold, and just wanted to spend my weekend loafing around in bed...although I also had to catch up on the housework I'd been neglecting. So yes, this post is a day late, and I'm going to avoid trying to post every day from now on because this is crazy. Today's post is just a bunch of Halloween nail art.

Here's China Glaze Getting to Gnaw you, mattified and stamped with Powder Perfect Orange Stamping polish and an image from their Halloween plate.

A collage of various spider-themed manis I did, all of which I posted on Facebook. Upper left and lower right are Pahlish Rum Runner Hibiscus, stamped with Powder Perfect White Stamping polish and the Halloween plate; lower left is ILNP BFF's, stamped with Konad White and Hehe 046 plate; upper right is Fantasy Makers Whiteout, the webs were hand-painted with Fantasy Makers Black as Knight, and the spider was built out of Butter London Gobsmacked with little red eyes made from Fantasy Makers Bloody Marie. As an aside, I tried to tag all the polishes I used in this post but I ran out of characters.

 Here's a franken I made out of Sally Hansen Pumpkin spice and orange holo craft glitter from JoAnn's Fabric. The craft glitter bled and colored the base this nice umber color, and the formula remained surprisingly workable; I think it's actually better than it was when I picked it up at the Dollar Tree. I hated the streaky jelly base and sparse glitter.

 Here's the franken stamped with Powder Perfect Golden Stamping Polish and the Halloween plate. Can you tell I really love these? I've been calling this "the franken" because when I initially made it, I thought it would be funny to call it "Pimpin' Spice." Because I pimped this polish out, get it? I have since come to realize that that is gross and I'm embarrassed to have called it that. Pimps are terrible and it's not cool to glorify them.

 Lastly, here's a polish I did for a contest in the Hella Holo Customs Facebook group, using all HHC polishes. The black is Crows Toes Sleep With One Eye Open; from left to right, the other polishes are Dreamland Lacquer Makai, Crows Toes Beyond Your Fears, Girly Bits Terra with red eyes of Powder Perfect Bruised Rose, and Dreamland Mauka.
So concludes Halloweek! Tomorrow we're back to regularly scheduled swatching of three lovely red and burgundy holos! See you later!

Saturday Nail Art - Jelly Sandwich of Sorts

This week's nail art is a little bit of a hard sell. I had two polishes with holo in them, and two polishes that were a jelly finish. I did a little experimenting (outtakes at the bottom of the post) and realized that Zoya Aurora and LA Colors Atomic actually combined to make a pretty awesome deep plum.

I decided to go with a dry brush mani. I did a base coat of Aurora, then swipes of Atomic and Liquid Sky Lacquer Babi's Bur-Bindi, the polish I was afraid would clash hard with the other two. In fact, it got kind of lost in the Aurora sandwich. I knew the formula was pretty opaque in one coat, so I thought I would see if it stamped...

...and so it does! The red-brown still doesn't stand out super well against the warm purple, but maybe you can tell that these are roses. I am pretty sure this pattern was from a Born Pretty plate, although I am terrible at making a note of what plate I used or remembering what they are called.

Not sure if I would call this mani a success, or just a surprisingly pleasing failure. 

Here's the test run, when I discovered how cool the two colors look together and that Babi's could be used to stamp a lovely little fern. This was a pretty good week overall; come back next week for some stranger things.

Saturday Nail Art - Stamped Textured Gradient

Welcome to Saturday Nail Art! I used two polishes from Holiday 2013 collections (OPI All Sparkly and Gold and China Glaze All Wrapped Up), but I used them to make non-holiday nail art.

I ran out of liquid latex, so I used NYC Strip Me Off as a barrier

All Wrapped Up was a bear to apply with the brush, and it dried matte but not exactly with the pebbly feel I think a polish needs to qualify as a texture. Sucking up the thick purple base with a sponge made application a lot easier, and the microglitters stood out enough to turn it into a proper textured polish.

I guess I must have been pleased with how this turned out...

...Since I took so many pictures.

After I'd done the gradient, I decided to stamp over it with Konad White. I used one Born Pretty plate and one Ejubias plate. I really like stamping over textures, I feel like it's kind of a rustic look.

I think this is one of the more successful nail art combos I've done on the blog so far. Of course, two of the polishes just happened to be textures, and I didn't try to work in Bonita All Things Blue (I thought that would be a recipe for disaster). Next week, I'll be swatching my first duochrome...well, sort of.

Saturday Nail Art - Golden Giraffes

All the polishes this week went pretty well with each other, so I did a more elaborate look than last week. I took step-by-step pictures for this week. I can't guarantee I'll always remember to take step-by-step pics, but I will try to do it every once in a while.

I started with a base coat of Monday's polish, OPI 50 Years of Style. I decided to do a smoosh mani using 50 Years and Wet N Wild 9021Orange. I painted my ring and pinky nails using Nicole by OPI A Heart of Gold. The smoosh marbling didn't work super great because 9021Orange is much thinner than 50 Years of Style.

To combat the sheerness, I blobbed the polish directly on my nails and then smooshed it with my stamper. Eventually, I just dabbed 9021Orange onto the nail and left the blobs to dry. It's a fast dry polish, so this actually worked. In the last pic, I've got 9021Orange on A Heart of Gold, and all my nails have been mattified. At this point, I had kind of a gold and orange giraffe thing going on, which, it turns out, nicely complements the stamping image I put on last. 

Stamped with Konad Black + Wet N Wild Black Creme

BP-L010 is the strange Born Pretty stamping plate I used. On the website, it's called "Aztec Plate," yet the images are dreamcatchers and giraffes and pi inside a target that's partially covered in bacon? It's a very, uh, interesting plate. It's good quality, and picking up the images was fairly easy (even with my worn out stamper). I like the way this mani turned out! It was just dumb luck that these polishes ended up being in the same week, and I think doing this weekly nail art is going to get more challenging and I will probably end up cheating and rearranging polishes to avoid making anything too hideous. Monday will be another first: the first indie polish, not counting that horrible picture of Vapid Spellcaster in the first post.

Saturday Nail Art - Stamping

Part of the point of this blog is to wear polishes I wouldn't have otherwise gotten around to. I've just shown swatches up to this point, but I think part of getting to really know a polish is using it for nail art. I didn't find the time to do anything really ornate this week, but I did want to see if Sally Girl 24 Karat would stamp well.

I edited this pic a bunch, but I didn't add the lens flare. That was in the picture already and I thought it looked cool.

Stamping isn't something I'm an expert at; even using a clear stamper, I have a hard time lining up the image on my nail. I used two images from the Uber-Chic succulents mini-stamp plate. I love succulents, so this was the first stamping plate I felt like I had to have. 

Stamped with Konad White and Sally Girl 24 Karat

The plate has a lot of cute images on it. I picked a design that actually appears twice on the plate in different sizes; the small one is perfectly pinkie-sized. I swear I'm going to stop blabbing about how my nails used to be long, but I actually swatched this week's polishes on them before the break. They turned out looking pretty bad, and I didn't get sunlight shots, just desk lamp. I thought I would show a couple even though they suck and I didn't edit them.

L: The plate
R: My nails dwarfed that tiny bottle :(

Join me next week when I resume swatching and eventually get to a polish whose name starts with a letter!