Hey guys,
So as my most popular post was my '
a few of my favourite things'
nail edition post I thought I'd do another one for you guys showing you how I did my nails for Halloween last week.
I wore this nail look for about five or six days without finding any chipping, but removed them simply because I wanted a clean nail look. I find that the products I used allowed for a polished finish that was difficult to smudge or chip and left a long lasting colour.
I'll put up a few shots of the individual nails and list which products I used as with the above mentioned blog post.
I hope you like it.
My overall nail look.
So on the left hand you can see my final design. I was pretty pleased with the overall appearance (even though my ring finger doesn't look so much like the character I wanted it to) and thought that they were nice as a Halloween look that still remains cute and doesn't look too fiddly.
I took a snap of the right hand before adding the Halloween designs to it to give you a better look at the colours I used once they had dried as they're all a bit more subtle then they look in the bottles.
In the middle you can see the products that I chose to use. In regards to how bold a colour I decided to use, I could have gone for some very vibrant block colours such as a bright green, obnoxious orange or other bright colours. However, I personally prefer the more gentle pastel tones here. This is entirely my personal preference but as I was the one wearing them around all day I feel I was justified in my decision.
This look was one of the two easiest to do and required only three products. I used one nail colour, a nail art pen and a top coat. the design was easy to do and could have been any pumpkin look - I chose this generic carved pumpkin face.
The process.
To start with
I filled in the nail with the block colour I wanted. I chose this coral colour (
essie resort collection in 'Resort Fling') as I thought it was a cute subtle orange that wouldn't be too 'in your face'.
I applied about three coats in total.
Once the base colour had dried I took a
Barry M nail art pen in black and put five dots onto the nail. One for the centre of each eye, one on either side of the mouth and one in the centre of the mouth. Then
I drew the basic smiley face around the dots.
Once that was done I filled in the mouth with
little incisions around the smile line to create a carved pumpkin look.
When the face details had dried I threw in some lines to give the effect of the pumpkin shape, and I added a
root at the top of the face towards the cuticle.
When all of the details of the face had dried I went back over them to make them a tad bolder. Then I put a coat of Barry M basecoat, topcoat and hardener on to seal the design.
This was the other easiest design to do. For this design I used four products. You can see that the black paint has cracked, this is because I only put on one thin coat of the product as opposed to two. I liked to overall finish of this and decided to leave it as it was. The lopsided mouth reminded me of Samara's victims in The Ring, Edvard Munch's The Scream, and of course the masked killer in the film series Scream (which I never linked to the painting before...).
The process.
For this design I used my Barry M Silk Nail Paint in 'Pearl' and added two coats of the colour.
When this had dried I took my nail art pens from Barry M in black and white and drew out a ghoulish face. I put two large dots of black on for the eyes and then drew a random shape for the mouth which I thought would look like the scary icons I modelled it after.
Again once this had dried I went over the eyes in another coat of black and then dotted them with the white nail art pen. I didn't do two coats for the mouth because I liked the cracked effect.
When this had all dried I out my topcoat on to seal it.
This is your stereotypical Dracula inspired vampire. It required four products. The process was really simple and I think it's really cute and effective. However, I wish I'd added another coat of black for his hair and taken a bit more time doing his mouth and fangs as they're a bit messy... but in spite of this, I think its a great design. I chose this colour because I couldn't find another
'skin-like' colour other than the usual French manicure colour, which
under usual circumstances would be perfect but in this case didn't look
right with the other colours in the overall look.
The process.
I put on two coats of essie Resort Fling 'Cocktails and Coconuts' for the base of the face.
Next I took the same black nail art pen from BarryM and drew out a curved 'V' shape to form his hair-line. Then I filled it in. (In hindsight I should have done another coat)...
I drew out a curved line to form his mouth and then added a couple of triangles to it to form his fangs.
I let the black paint dry and then filled in the triangles with my white nail art pen to form his fangs.
Once all the paint had dried I sealed it with my topcoat.
Believe it or not, this is supposed to be Frankenstein's monster. Now I'm the first person to point out how shit this is, but if you look at the image on my actual nail you'll think this one is a million times better. the original on my actual nails looked like the Hulk!!! again this look was really simple, it used three products and was pretty straight forward. I think it'd look a lot better if someone else with better artistic capabilities did it. I think I'd try a different look next time as I'm not too keen on this look on its own.
So if you're not totally repelled by this then here's how to do it...
The process.I used Rimmel London's 'Jaded Green' for this look. I have a lot of green's but I thought this one complemented the other colours best. I only needed one coat for this but added two just to build a solid base.
Then I began to build the face. I started by drawing in his hair in random triangles and filling them in.
Next I added semi circles for his eyes, dots for his nose and a line for his mouth.
When I was happy with his face and hair, I added a small triangle on either side of his face to form the bolts that you see in American versions of the monster.
I went over everything with a second coat of black paint.
Then I sealed it all with my topcoat.
I was planning to use a grey nail colour for this but couldn't find any of my grey's... so I opted for another colour from my essie Resort Fling collection. Again I decided not to go over the black again as I liked the cracked effect and thought it pulled together the whole dry, mummified look. This design called four four products.
The process.
I found that this colour was quite thin so I ended up
applying three coats of
essie 'Find Me an Oasis' from the Resort Fling collection.
Then I used the black nail art pen and
drew a thick band of black all the way across the nail just above center. I filled this in.
I branched off from the thick band adding some
thin curved lines to form the bandages.
When the black had dried I went over the bandage lines to make them bolder and a bit tattier looking.
I added
white circles to the thick band and then dotted them with black to make the eyes.
After this I sealed the look with my topcoat.
And that's everything I did to make these Halloween inspired nails. I hope you like them and found this post useful.
If you have any questions about the products I used or would like to recommend a new look for me to try out, then please feel free to leave me a comment.
nicholaannexx
