40 Great Nail Art Ideas - Halloween!

This weeks theme for 40 Great Nail Art Ideas is Halloween; how appropriate as it's tomorrow lol!  This is a pretty simple design by my favourite Halloween mani this year for sure!  Here's what I came up with!

This was my inspiration; a hand towel I bought a couple weeks ago at Marshalls!

Started with a base of two coats of Sinful Colors Burn Rubber; no topcoat.  This is a textured polish but unfortunately didn't have as much texture as I would have liked.  

Stamped using Born Pretty BP-L013 using Funky Fingers Gesso.

Added pumpkin faces using an image from Chez Halloween 002 using Funky Fingers Dark Knight.  Considering this was a mani that I could not get the clear jelly stamper to work and I placed these images by regular stamping method, I was thrilled how well I lined them up; the middle is slightly off but other than that, I thought I did ok! (I couldn't understand why the stamper wouldn't work when I had used it so many times with no issues and then all of a sudden had problems; this is when I discovered if you roll the image with a good amount of pressure, it will pick up.  I retried this image and got it to work OK after that.)

Added a coat of top coat to finish.

Please excuse terribly bad cuticles, but this was my right hand; I think I lined it up better that my left hand lol!

Here's the other ladies Halloween mani's!

An InLinkz Link-up

Thanks for looking!

Blue Valentine's

With Valentine's Day around the corner, I thought I'd share some themed mani's. Here's one I came up with not too long ago!

Started with a base of two coats of Different Dimension Wave if You Sea Me, two coats, no topcoat.

Before stamping, added two...yes...two layers of KBShimmer Clearly on Top.  I knew I would be stamping with white stamping polish and blues (and purples and reds for that matter) sometimes have a tendency to have the base colour bleed through so wanted and then effecting the stamping polish, so wanted to (try to) make sure I had a good shield of topcoat between the base and stamping.  

Stamped using SdP 10 with an accent of SdP 72 using Funky Fingers Gesso.

Top coated with KBShimmer Clearly on Top to finish....and held my breath to see if the white stamping would change colour....but it didn't!  Unfortunately, I don't know if it was because of the two coats of top coat in between or if this happen to be a base that doesn't have the issue as not every blue, purple or red do this.  But none the less, I was happy the white stamping held fast! 

Different lighting; can see a bit more of the shimmer in the base a little better.

A couple days after I did these nails, I was organizing my stash a bit and came across Sinful Colors Blue by You and thought it looked close to Different Dimension Wave If You Sea Me, so decided to do a comparison.

It's hard to compare as the light hitting the swatch sticks isn't the same but they aren't 100% dupes, they are thisssss close; the shimmer in the Sinful was more abundant and the shading is just a smidgen different. (Well, smidgen to me; there might be those who have a better eye for this who say they aren't even close!)  

Sinful Color on the left; Different Dimension on the right.

Different Dimension on top; Sinful Colors on bottom.

Thanks for looking!

Santa's Getting Ready at the North Pole!

Christmas is just a few short days away; here are Santa, Mrs. Claus and the elves getting ready for the big day at the North Pole!

For some reason, I can't find any notes on this; I'm surmising they got deleted by accident at some point during the year as it's from last year but didn't have time to post it.  So I'll try to mention items if I recognize them. Started with a base of Sinful Cool Gray; probably two coats, no topcoat. 

 Sponged on white and blue for background interest.

I had premade a few stamping decals.....

....using images from Cheeky Jumbo 6 Happy Holidays (index and pinky), MJXVIII (ring), QA19 (thumb).  I think the Santa is a SdP plate but will have to double check. No idea what polishes were used.

I wasn't sure I'd have space for the North Pole sign but decided to add it to the index; the image is from MoYou Festive Collection-01.

Added a few random seasonal dots and top coated to finish (not sure if this pix is before or after topcoat though!)

Top coated to finish.

Thanks for looking!

Another Blue; This Time a Nerd

I have a bunch of posts saved in archives which is why there has been an assortment of nail lengths and shapes in these most recent posts as I'm trying to clear them up.......not that I reallyyyy think anyone is paying attention to nail shapes and lenghts! Anyway, I noticed that there is a lot...and I mean A LOT....of blue mani's in archives; I'm going to try to mix them up a bit with others but it must be one of my favourite colours as there are so many (although to be honest, I don't think I wear THAT much blue, I just think I haven't posted as many of them as other colours).  Anyway, here's another blue mani that I was wearing last summer almost a year to the day.

Started with a base of Sinful Colors Oceanside; this is two coats, no topcoat.

Added a coat of Nerd Lacquer Antisocial Media, topped with SV.

Bottle shot of NL Antisocial Media.  (I feel badly showing this because unless you swap or buy this on a polish sale, it's probably hard to get as there haven't been any Nerd Lacquer sales in a long, long time.  It really is too bad that there isn't more consistency with the Nerd shop being open so that these polishes can be bought.)

Stamped using CND Gold Chrome using an image from FUN 7.

Topped with SV.

I had good wear with this; this is how my mani looked after 4 days (here's my highly sophisticated tracking system to show 4 days wear!)

Very faint tip wear but overall, pretty good!

Sorry for posting so much blue; if you are a blue lover, I suppose it's good but if you aren't, I am trying to mix stuff up!

Thanks for looking!

Digit-al Dozen Does Brands; Day 4

Day 4 of Digit-al Dozen does Brands.  Here's what I came up with!

Started with a base of two coats of CND Oilslick (thumb), OPI This Gown Needs a Crown (index and ring), OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls (middle) and Sinful Colors Cool Gray (pinky).  Topped all but the silver with SV.  I must say this is the first time I wore OPI This Gown Needs a Crown and I love it!  Love the sparkle/matte look, easy clean up and it's not gritty at all.  New fave go to silver!

Added assortment of images from various plates; MJ XXIII test (middle), MJ XXV (computer on index), FUN 6 (ring), MJ XXI (thumb) and QA 18 (pinky and index apples).  Stamping polishes used were black Konad black special polish and CND silver chrome.

Decided to add a few random dots using same base polishes and black and white Konad, as well as added an additional apple on index finger.

Finished mani by topping all fingers with SV except index.  I wanted to see if there was an obvious difference by top coating OPI This Gown Needs a Crown or not for future mani reference!

 

I must say this is the great thing about doing the Digit-al Dozen challenges; I doubt there is any other reason why I would put Steve Jobs face on my nails...but on the other hand, I'm glad that these type of stamping images exist as they give us so many different mani options and variety.

Here's the other ladies Day 4 mani's!

An InLinkz Link-up

Thanks for looking!

Digit-al Dozen Does Monochrome; Day 1..plus DD Giveaway!

It's the first Digit-al Dozen Challenge for 2014 but before I get onto the nails, please make sure you go way down to the bottom of this post for the raffleopter for the new Digit-al Dozen Giveaway!  There are lots and lots of awesome prizes; the contest is open internationally; however, for some of the prizes, shipping is US only so please be sure to read the rules and regs for more information!  Good luck to everyone!

Here's the mani I came up with for Day 1 of the DD monochrome challenge. (Please excuse these pix if the cleanup isn't the best or my pix are fuzzy; I have eye infection in both eyes and everything is fuzzy all the time so I can't tell even while I'm posting these pictures if the image is clear or fuzzy!)



Started with a base of two coats of OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls, and top coated (no pix as have shown many times).  Sponged using Barry M Grey.



Added lighter gray sponging using Sinful Colors Cool Gray.



Added stamped image from FUN 6 using FUN black stamping polish.



Topped with SV to finish.



Here's the other ladies Day 1 challenge mani's!

Thanks for looking!



a Rafflecopter giveaway

Out of Africa!

I just found out about MoYou's pinterest contest a couple days ago and did a mani that night to enter. My entry with this mani is here if you have pinterest and would like to pin/share (the contest is based on a point basis; two points for every share and one point for every like; I had already added a few other entries on the board too of past mani's too); the MoYou board is here if you would like to check out and pin/like your favourites from the other entries.....there are lots of incredible entries if you want to browse the board for mani ideas! 

Started with a base of two coats of China Glaze Happy Go Lucky.  No topcoat as I waited for it to dry as I knew I would be sponging.

Sponged Sinful Colors Citrine.  In the interest of time and because I knew I was sponging again, I didn't do cleanup, sorry!

Sponged on Duri Taming of the Shrew; this is before cleanup.

After cleanup!  Waited for it to dry a bit for stamping (although I could have top coated and stamped it right away but liked the texture look).

Stamped using black Konad special polish using MoYou Explorer Collection 10.

Then fixed up the bottom a little!

Added a sun using a big dotter and then just expanded it a little to make it a little bit bigger, using yellow Konad special polish.  I really like how it looked right here; very simple but effective. But decided to add a few birds from the same plate to finish.

Added a few more birds using the same plate.  That big dot of yellow polish for the sun took a while to dry (you can tell from the pix below that it looks like a big blob!) so had to wait a bit longer before stamping it.

Finally was able to add the birds over the sun on the ring ringer once the big yellow dot had dried (the pix below is the mani I used for the contest).

While I really like how this looked, I have a need to topcoat everything so added a layer of SV to finish.

Hope you're having a great weekend......and thanks for looking!