My favorite Halloween Polishes, part 2

...You ready for part 2? (if you missed part one, you can find it here. )

Last time I showed you some basic building blocks, plus a couple that were a little extra-special. I'm going to continue on with the extra-specials--and by coincidence, all of today's offerings are indies, too. :)

Let's have at it!!

Best all-in-one Halloween polish: No Worries Polish Truffula Tree

No Worries Polish Truffula Tree, artificial light

If you want a fun, special Halloween manicure that will catch they eye, but don't have time for nail art and the like, this polish is for you. Beautiful formula, and very festive. Your one-stop Halloween polish experience. :)

Most versatile Halloween accent polish: The Nail Junkie Tiger

The Nail Junkie Tiger

I realized as I was putting this together that I don't have a full swatch of this polish, because I tend to use it as an accent rather than a full mani. So I'm showing you a Halloween mani I did with it instead of a swatch. This is a great polish to use as an accent nail, a background glitter to stamp over, a stand-out skittle nail. The basic orange-and-black color scheme make it perfect for almost any sort of theme--spiders, witches, pumpkins/jack-o-lanterns, haunted houses, bats. Yes yes yes, I realize it has bar glitter. I love bar glitter myself, but even if you don't love it for daily wear, I think it still has a place in theme manicures. :)


Darkest, most goth-type Halloween polish: A Study In Polish Consulting Criminal

A Stud In Polish Consulting Criminal, direct sunlight

Perfect for deadly vampires, serious sorcerers and goth fairies, this red, white and silver in black jelly polish will take care of all of your dark, shadow-filled Halloween-style desires.


Polish that looks most like body part and blood splatter: 6 Harts Ninja Bat

6 Harts Ninja Bat, over medium gray franken, indirect sunlight

Let's say you're stuck in a horror movie, and some serial killer is coming after you, trying to kill you. Let's further say that you pull out a grenade, and blow him to bits. Let's still further say you take a look over at the wall that his body splattered all over. That's what this polish reminds me of, when I'm in a Halloween state of mind.

On that note: Spaghetti and meatballs, anyone?

Most night-sky and alien-esque Halloween polish: Nail'd It Purp...Excuse Me.

Nail'd It Purp...Excuse Me!, no undies, direct sunlight

Looking for a night sky polish that comes with its own moons? Want something that captures a whimsical, alien-creature type of look? Going to the party as Dr. Who, and want to take the galaxy with you? Want nails that the sauciest of sorceresses would wear, polish that will make your nails look like they can cast spells all on their own? This is the polish for you. You could get a slightly more subtle look than the one I put together here by putting undies under it and using one coat. But who wants subtle for Halloween??? :)


Most self-explanatory: Pretty & Polished Blood Clot

Pretty & Polished Blood Clot, no undies, two coats, artificial light

Yeah, it's probably pretty obvious why this one made the list--this is so creepily, horrendously like a microscope view of blood cells clotting up, it makes the Halloween freak inside me dance with joy. This is also one of those frustrating polishes to photograph--it looks so much better (and creepier!) in person. I believe this was also released for a while under the name 'Bloody Mary'; whichever way you find it, your evil nurse/doctor/serial killer costume would not be complete without some of this dripped, er, painted onto your nails.


Most non-horrific Halloween polish: SoFlaJo Frankie's Lab Dance

SoFlaJo Frankie's Lab Dance, 2 coats, indirect sunlight

 

The only thing horrific here is my swatching ability--these were taken a year ago, I apparently didn't realize the bottle was in focus rather than the nails, and they make me shudder! But they still get the basic idea across, including the duochrome aspect of the polish, and the glitters. This is a wonderful polish for princesses, faeries, elves of various sorts, and other sweet, ethereal costumes. It's also just a fun, quick Halloween polish that will help you capture the general spirit of the holiday in one bottle.


And to end, an absolutely quintessential Halloween polish: Leesha's Lacquer Monster Mash

Leesha's Lacquer Monster Mash over Zoya Keiko, artificial light

I have undies here, but you can build this polish up on its own to get more glitter and nearly the exact same base color (as you can see in the bottle). This is another polish that I love for capturing the spirit of the holiday just as it is, with no nail art and no costume to pair with it. It's full of energy and fun, just the way Halloween should be.

And so, my favorites are at an end...but I'm sure this is only the beginning of the possibilities. So I leave you with this very important question: what amazing Halloween polishes am I missing from this list? What are your favorites? Point me to them!!! :)

Hugs and Halloween thrills,
M.

Twinpost: Cheeky 40!

Hello!!

Another one of the things I got very behind on last month was my Cheeky challenge twinposts...in fact, I gave up on them completely for a while. Dina has been waiting patiently for me to get my act together, lol, and in fact has had her half of this twin post up for a while; you can see what she did with it by clicking here.

For this plate, Cheeky CH40, we decided to use the 'I <3 Polish Bottle' image. I have to admit, I wasn't inspired by this, I'm not sure why. It just didn't speak to me, even though I do love polish, lol. Normally ideas start swirling when I look at an image...in this case, nothing. A few days later? Still nothing. And a few days after that, even less than nothing. Yes, it is possible to have less than nothing, and if you've ever had writer's or artist's block (or owe money on your credit cards), you know what I mean, lol.

I figured if I couldn't get a cool design idea going in my head, I'd start with a cool polish, especially in light of the theme. I took a glitter I've been waiting to try for a while, and used that as a base. I give you Pretty & Polished Blood Clot (renamed since I bought it, I think to Bloody Mary), a blood-red jelly with red hexes of varied sizes:

My heart's crippled by the vein that I keep on closing...

You cut me open and I...

Keep bleeding, keep keep bleeding love...

(Is it weird that nail polishes call up song lyrics for me?)

Next, I stamped the image with Konad White on the accent nail. Then I isolated the polish bottle and made rows of polish bottles on my other nails to represent the rows and rows of polish that I have around my house...>.>

Ugh, ugh, ugh. It's too simple, the rows aren't straight, and I managed to make my stamping polish smudge. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRR. Ah well, the base polish is pretty, and I'll do better next time!! :)

Thanks for stopping by. :)

Xoxox,
M.

Before & After: China Glaze Cranberry Splash

Hello!!

Today has not been a good day--neither was yesterday--and I could use to have a little color and positivity in my life to make things a little brighter and happier. So today's prompt is a good one for me to focus on writing up right now...because it involves something I love and am fairly proud of.

Today's prompt is to do a manicure that's inspired by fabric. Right away when I saw this prompt, I knew which fabric I wanted to use...several years ago, when I was walking through a fabric store trying to pick out fabric to make a Halloween costume, I saw a design that I fell in love with, and had to have. The moment I saw it I knew I wanted to make it into a beautiful skirt:

There were several problems with this plan. One is that I am not good at sewing. With an easy pattern and a lot of time, I can produce something that will pass as acceptable. This works best with Halloween costumes, because nobody expects them to be perfect anyway, and you don't expect to get a lot of use out of them if you sew one of your seams a little bit closer than you should. That said, I have made myself about 4-5 articles of clothing in my life, and I figured it was worth the risk. If you look at them hem in the picture above, you will see it's far from perfect, although not quite as bad as it seems, because it's laying a bit oddly due to a pleat that needs to be ironed correctly.

The second problem is...the fabric wasn't really intended to be used for clothes. It was intended for home decoration, and was a pain in the tushie to work with. But, I worked slowly and carefully, and while it isn't perfect, I am proud of it and it's my favorite article of clothing to this day.

And I couldn't pass up the opportunity to make a manicure out of it, as well.

I started with a base of China Glaze Cranberry Splash, a pretty shimmery red:

China Glaze Cranberry Splash in direct sun

China Glaze Cranberry Splash in the shade

Then I did a gradient with the Cranberry Splash and Misa Spinning Out Of Control (I didn't bother to clean up the cuticles cause I knew I'd have to again after the next step):

Then things got a little complicated--why am I surprised, it's only fitting because the skirt was so complicated! I stamped over the gradient using Butter London The Full Monty, and Konad Plate m64. I put some Pretty & Polished Heist down over the bottom part, to give it a little gold-flake goodness. And then it went very, very wrong. I went to reach for China Glaze Golden Enchantment, and I grabbed I'm Not Lion instead, which is much thicker and more glittery. So when I sponged some at the tips, it ended up looking like this:

Ugh, just ugh. Icky Icky ugh ugh ugh. So, I took it all off, and started all over again...and this time did everything from above except the last bit of sponged glitter:

Ah yes, much better. Even with the random hair in that last picture. Where do they always come from??!!!

Hope you like it, and thank you for looking. Please check out the other beautiful manis below. :)

Xoxox,
M.

Before & After: Private School with honors

Hello!!

Today's prompt in the 31 Day Challenge is 'color opposites'. One of my favorite sets of contrasts is white and black with red, or white and grey with red. That might be one of the reasons I love Pretty & Polished's Private School so much; at first glance it looks like a grey polish with white and black hexes...but then...when you look closer...bah-bam! Awesome red microglitter!

Pretty & Polished Private School

Love that microglitter...it's the wild side of that proper private school straight-A student!

So I decided to do something simple to accent that. At the schools I went to, if you graduated with honors, you wore a special set of cords hanging around your neck and down your shoulders over your gown on graduation day. So I decided to make a set of honors ropes for this lovely polish with nail tape and rhinestones:

My cuticles don't graduate with honors these days, that's for sure. I've been putting cuticle oil on them 1-2 times a day, but the combination of daily polish changes and weather have been taking their toll. I'll try to get them in better shape!

Anyway, it's a fun, simple mani with some contrasting colors, and I'm pretty happy with how it came out. Now, off to bed with me!

Thanks for reading, and please check out the other manicures linked below. :)

Xoxox!
M.

Gradient On Fire

After yesterday's inspiration fiasco, I looked to my readers on Tumblr for inspiration. I asked for ideas and some readers happily obliged. smoresz suggested: I’d love to see a smoky gray nail fading from dark to light, with a red/orange/yellow sparkle on top of it so it looks life fire and smoke! 

Ask and you shall receive...kinda.

Unfortunately this wasn't the best glitter choice for the manicure so I'm not entirely happy with the result. The gradient was done with Essence Movie Star and Zoya Carey. The glitter topcoat is Phoenix from Pretty and Polished. I wish I had an awesome metallic glitter that would've been appropriate because this beautiful matte just isn't right for the effect. Beautiful, just not right.

I hope I did your idea justice smoresz! Enjoy!