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Thursday, October 31, 2013

Happy Halloween!

I don't have a lot of time to write something, so I'll just stick to pictures for today! Here's my Halloween stamping manicure, and it's the last Halloween one this year. Promise!




The polishes used are LA Colors in Fiery Orange and Konad Special Nail Polish in black. The stamps used are BM plates 4, 13, 213, 223, 224, and 225.

I hope you all are having a fantastic and fun Halloween!

Sunday, October 27, 2013

Cyborg inspired nails

As I mentioned in my previous post I love Halloween. The main reason is that I really enjoy dressing up and I don't get many opportunities to do it in my day to day life. This year I was invited to a sci-fi themed party, and the first thing that popped into my head was being a cyborg. I usually go all-out when it comes to costume making, but this year I didn't have a lot of time in advance to put something together. Eventually I decided to go for a terminator-inspired look, where I used makeup to create cyborg pieces showing through wounds. The party was last night, and while I don't have a lot of experience doing this kind of thing the end result was pretty good!

Of course I had to do my nails to match my costume. I decided to do something similar to my circuit board nails as I figured it had the right look without being over-the-top obvious. It also matched really well with the dress I ended up wearing. Thankfully this did not take anywhere near as long as my last attempt!




I did this design by putting on a base coat of "Celeb City" by Sally Hansen, then laid down some striping tape and painted a layer of "Black Out", also by Sally Hansen, on top. I'm really happy with the end result, though I feel like they don't make sense unless you see the whole costume. So here's the final look all put together:


You can't see all of the "wounds" I did very well, there's one on my shoulder and one on the back of my hand. They were hard to get in a picture! I also got a red grid pattern contact to complete the look, here's a close up to show it off:



It's safe to say I creeped a lot of people out! This costume isn't my best work ever, but given the time I had to put it together I'm pretty happy with it. Can't wait to do it all over again next year!

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Halloween monsters

Well, after two long months I'm finally able to return to doing nail art! My nails are (almost) back to normal, so I've bought a new nail hardener to try and I have my fingers crossed it's going to go better than last time. I've decided to use Sally Hansen's Hard as Wraps, I've seen some good reviews for it and I haven't had any problems with the brand before. I'm still a little sad that Nail Envy didn't work out for me. It was, and still is, so highly recommended by so many people I know. C'est la vie.

Of course my return ended up being slightly less than triumphant. I put a lot of thought into what I wanted to do, and with Halloween coming up I was sold on the idea of doing a variety of monsters. I'm a bit out of practice but overall I was happy with the results...until I put the top coat on. Smudges. Everywhere. I thought I'd left lots of time for it to dry too, so it was very disappointing. They still look good from a distance though, so I just left them. I've gotten some compliments on them too, so they must be all right!




Here's the colours I used:
Skull: Sally Hansen's "White On" for the base, Quo's Instant Artist in black for the design
Mummy: Sally Hansen's "White On" for the base, Quo's Instant Artist in black and white for the design
Zombie: L'Oreal's "Safari Chic" for the base, LA Color's "Pink Chiffon" for the brains, Tivoli Art Deco polish in red for the blood, Quo's Instant Artist in black and white for the rest
Frankenstein: L'Oreal's "Safari Chic" for the base, Quo's Instant Artist in black and white for the design
Vampire: Sally Hansen's "White On" for the base, Quo's Instant Artist in black for the design

It's good to be back!