Halloween Gradient

I really wanted to do a candy corn looking type of gradient using the sand/texture polishes, but other than OPI Solitaire, which is a different consistency than the other ones I wanted to use, I realized I don't have another white sand/texture polish.  Barry M Lady would be perfect (and I ironically got it in the mail from a fabulous lady in a Halloween exchange a couple days after I did this), so I had to improvise using the polishes I had on hand.

Started with a base of Zoya Solange, two coats, no topcoat.  I didn't realize how bright Solange is....you need to wear sunglasses to look at it!

For the gradient, added Julie G Tangerine Dream.  (Sorry, I didn't do any cleanup here as I knew I'd be doing more layering and just didn't want to take the time to do the cleanups in between).  

Sponged on Julie G Hot Cinnamon.  It was around this time that I realized that I did the gradient in the wrong order on four of my fingers (well, not wrong per se but not in the way I had intended as I wanted the dark at the tips and light at the cuticles).  But it was late and I wasn't doing it over again so just worked with it!

Stamped using charcoal FUN stamping polish using HD04 on all fingers except ring; ring finger is MJ XIII. 

Topped with SV to finish.

I may try the candy corn gradient again if I have time using Barry M Lady as the white part.....so many Halloween mani ideas and not much time though!.....and if I do, I hope I get the order of the gradient right!

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

Digit-al Dozen DOES It Again; Day 10, Books

I should retitle this post:  Day 10, mani from H  E L  L .....but I'll be nice and leave as is.  I'll explain as I go along...but anyway, here's what I came up with....can you guess the book?

Started with a base of two coats each of OPI Bride's Bouquet and China Glaze Happy Go Lucky, topped with SV.  I knew I was going to be adding stamper decals so even though I topped with SV, I waited about half an hour for nails to dry at this point.



For the mani, I had made a couple stamper decals the night before to use; the cat's hat for the middle finger and the cat for the pinky.  This was the first sign of trouble....I applied a layer of clear coat for the middle finger and when I took the decal off the stamper, it flew off and fell into the little lid of acetone I keep at my work station for cleanup.  What does a polish stamper decal do in a pot of acetone....disintegrate immediately! It takes a bit a time to make a stamper decal as you have to wait between stamping, adding the colours and then the topcoat for the decal to dry which is why I make them the night before or sometimes days in advance of using them.  But my nails were already prepped and ready to go....so I started another one and just thought I'd work at it as I went along this mani and hoped for the best. (I suppose I could have just stamped on the hat but I had a vision and a stamped decal is what I was wanting).

So while I was waiting for the stamper decal to dry, I decided to do a multi-coloured stamping of the fish images.  The plate used is for all images is MJ XIII; stamping polishes used are red Konad special polish, FUN stamping polish in Bubble Blue and Mundo de Unas yellow and green stamping polishes.  Here's a quick pix of applying the polish to the plate for the multi-coloured images.



This was another trouble spot that took a fair amount of time.  The green and yellow polishes are on the thick side and quite a bit come out on the brush so I had blobs of polish and trying to fit in into the small space of images that are fairly close together was hard.....I was really trying to do the scraping so that the colours didn't bleed into one another.  This took me a several tries (well, several is being conservative) until I got a couple stamps that were OK enough to use.  Even then, I did have a couple of bleeds from one colour onto another but felt that enough time and polish had been spent on trying to do it better.  I didn't think my nails were wide enough for five fish so didn't pay too close attention to the green polish and got two rows of them...oh well, just pretend they aren't there!  Because I was being so careful too on trying to keep the colours from intermingling as well as trying to keep the colours thin, some of the polish dried before it made it to my nails so the stamping wasn't the best so I had to hand paint in them a little too.



Added eyes to the fish using a brush and black Konad special polish.  I purposely did a brush dot versus a dotting tool to make it more like the book drawing...in hindsight, my filling in the fishes a little with a brush gave the fish more of the book drawing imagery too.



Time to start adding the stamper decals.  This is the Cat in the Hat decal I was going to apply to the pinky.  Keeping in mind that I was working on the hat stamper decal as I was going along to replace the one that landed in the acetone bath.



The rule of thumb for stamper decals is to add a coat of clear coat to the dry base coat  as it helps maneuver it on the nail, so used the first clear coat I found; Orly topcoat.  Added this to the pinky, took off the stamper decal and went to apply to the pinky...only to discover that I guess Orly TC and SV don't like one another because the base polish started smudging and squishing like no tomorrow.  I quickly tried to place the stamper decal without trying to touch it too much as the topcoat eats at the stamper decal too so topped it with SV to apply.  At this point, I was probably two hours into the mani and was fed up...so I didn't take too many pix of step by step as I go along as I usually do as I just wanted this mani to be over! Once the hat stamper decal looked dry enough, added a coat of HK Girl QD topcoat to the middle finger then added the hat stamper decal.  I had no weird reaction and it adhered to the base no issues without any weird disintegration of the base polish underneath, but had some minimal decal smear as it wasn't terribly dry.  Not too noticeable (only in macro!)



Added Dr. Seuss wording and a couple fish on index finger too before topping with SV.



Here's the book cover that was my inspiration.




I thought this mani would be relatively fast to do and while it didn't turn out too badly in the end, it was a lot of time and issues galore.

Here's the other ladies book mani's!


Thanks for looking!

Digit-al Dozen DOES It Again; Halloween, Day 2

No, Halloween didn't come early!  It's just day two of the Digit-al Dozen DOES it again challenge; Day 2's theme is Halloween....this is what I came up with!

Started with a base of two coats of NYX White, with an accent of FingerPaints Black Expressionism, topped with one coat of China Glaze Ruby Pumps, then topped with SV. 

Stamped using Chez Halloween 001 on all fingers except index, which is MJ XIII using black Konad special polish.

Added drippings on thumb using China Glaze Ruby Pumps.  The web design is slightly visible underneath in these pix but you can't even see it IRL.

Added a spider on accent using white Konad special polish from Chez Halloween 001.

Topped with SV to finish.

Here's the other Day 2 Halloween mani's!

Don't forget to enter the Digit-al Dozen Giveaway here!

Thanks for looking!