This is my first week blogging about my adventures in nail art and it just so happens to be Halloween week!!  I’m so glad that I worked up the courage to start this while there’s still time to have some spooky fun 🎃.

So I prepared for today by buying some Twinkled T nail vinyls, Halloween themed of course.  And since I also knew that I wanted them to be purple and black, I did a quick google image search for “black and purple Halloween nails”.  Which led me to this fun idea from @amkuch15 on instagram:

But, I didn’t want to do Disney nails quite yet, so I kept looking.  And then Youtuber, Kelli Marissa, posted her own Halloween nail art video, and I just knew that I had to mix the two together.  I don’t have any of the exact same polishes or items that they used, but I have things that are close enough. All you really need is a purple, black, and white polish, purple glitter, and decals or vinyls.  Or, if you’re extremely talented you can paint the images on by hand (I’m not).  But, after watching Kelli’s video and dealing with these vinyls I think I’m going to switch to those rub-on nail decals the second I’m through with all of my vinyls (too bad I’ve bought quite a few).

So let’s get on to what I actually did!

What I used:

• Base Coat:  Glisten & Glow – Stuck on Blue!
• 1st Color:  Sinful Colors – Let’s Talk
• 2nd Color:  Essie – No More Film
• 3rd Color:  Sally Hansen Hard as Nails – Black Out
• 4th Color:  Sally Hansen Hard as Nails – White On
• Glitter:  Starrily – Purplexi Glass
• Top Coat:  Glisten & Glow – HK Girl
• nail polish remover
• Twinkled T clean up brush, size #2
• cosmetic sponge wedges
• Bliss Kiss Simply Peel liquid latex
• Twinkled T Halloween nail vinyls

So I started with a simple base coat to hopefully protect my nails from these dark colors (crossing my fingers).  Then, one coat of the bright purple Sinful Colors Let’s Talk.  I was cleaning up along the way since no matter how steady I try to be, I always find a way to get the nail polish on my skin.  Once that was mostly dry, I added the liquid latex around all of my nails so I wouldn’t have as much clean up after the gradient sponging.  I actually didn’t realize until I was looking at the photos that I lost a lot of the bright purple to the dark gradient.  So looking back, I probably would not have used the Essie No More Film and made the Sinful Colors a lot more prominent, since I don’t think Essie helped to blend the colors, and it just added to making everything dark.

Before the gradient

After the gradient

I then added the Starrily glitter flakes to my ring fingers and thumbs.  I used the sponge method for adding the glitter, where the sponge soaks up most up the clear polish and you end up only applying the glitter flakes.  After adding top coat on the other nails, it was time to wait for more drying.  When I was sure my nails were absolutely dry, I put on a variety of nail vinyls on my pointer, middle, and pinky fingers.  I was torn between being more scary or more cutesy, but these vinyls are all pretty cutesy so in the end it didn’t seem to matter.

Add the glossy top coat before the vinyls

Spider & bones vinyls

Spooky eye vinyls

I used the white polish for the vinyl images because I thought it would be a good contrast from the dark purple and black background.  But as you’ll see, I had trouble with both the nail vinyls not peeling off perfectly, and the colors bleeding.  So, just about every other vinyl that I lifted was being a brat, and I had to go grab a toothpick to try and fix the little lines that got messed up when I peeled them up.  I think the worst culprits were the spider on my left hand and the snake on my right.  By the time I was done trying to correct that mess I wasn’t focusing enough on how dry my nails were.  Because of that, when I put on the final top coat the purple bled into the white, making it a spotted white/light purple image.  I decided not to mess with it anymore because 1) If you don’t focus on it, you can’t really notice, 2) I was scared I would just screw it up even worse, and 3) I was tired.

I couldn’t quite get the spider’s eyes right

Left Hand: the purple bled into the white

Right Hand: the purple bled into the white

This took me about 3 hours, from set up to clean up.  And even though it wasn’t perfect, I’m still pretty happy with them.  I love the colors, and it was a nice excuse to use the Starrily polish that my boyfriend bought me a few months ago.  Now I just hope that these nails don’t clash with my costume too much (I’ll be the forever cool tomb raider, Lara Croft 😎)

Final Left Hand

Final Right Hand

Feel free to share with me your costumes or Halloween nails!  Bonus points if you know what podcast inspired the title of this post

Update:

So here’s a little update on how these nails lasted… Unfortunately by Monday afternoon I was already having to do some emergency repairs. As you can see, my right hand pointer finger chipped, and chunks of the glitter flakes and polish came off my thumb.  So I put a tiny bit of black on the tip of my pointer finger nail and reapplied top coat (by late Tuesday it chipped again so I gave up on this finger). Then for my thumb, I put a layer of the Essie polish in the crack, let it dry, a layer of the black, let it dry, and then sponged on some more glitter. Out of fear of losing the glitter flakes again, I doubled up on the top coat. But it was extremely uncomfortable to have so many layers on my nail.  I would not recommend this.  Then this morning there was a chip on the corner of my left hand ring finger, and by the end of the day I had picked it completely off.  Good thing I’m redoing them tonight!

By Monday I chipped my thumb and pointer finger nail

Thursday morning, it started out with a tiny chip…

By Thursday afternoon, it ended with me picking the entire chunk of nail polish off