Halloween costume nails

Now that it's two days before Thanksgiving, I'll share what I wore on my nails for Halloween!

Derek and I went as Bob and Linda Belcher for Halloween this year!

 

It was such an awesome costume!  Although my wig was pretty atrocious.  The picture on the bag was a cute little 50s flip, and I ended up with this tangled mass of not even slightly flipped hair.  But at least it was more accurate to Linda than my chin-length blonde-and-blue hair!

I wasn't quite sure what to do with my nails for Linda, though.  We never really see Linda's nails - in fact, the only instance of anyone's nails being drawn into question I can remember is when Louise Belcher gets those ridiculous talons on the cruise ship.  So, I had to improvise.  What would Linda Belcher wear on her nails to a Halloween party?

Perhaps... some awesome trick-or-treat water decals!

I got these decals from KBShimmer a few weeks ago.  I wasn't sure what to expect from using full-nail decals for the first time; my nails are super curvy, so laying flat things on them doesn't tend to work out very well.  But water decals are incredibly flexible, and they're also so thin that two coats of top coat completely smooths out any wrinkles!  I was very impressed.

The color is also really nicely opaque.  I was nervous for the black background over white polish, but it looks great!  I am definitely a satisfied customer with these water slide decals - and I'm really glad that I bought some hilarious kitty Christmas decals!

I want to take a moment to rave about how much I loved dressing up as Linda.  First of all, it was super cheap: I already owned the jeans, and I got the shirt and apron at a thrift store; the wig and glasses were pretty inexpensive, too!  Secondly, it was really comfortable.  I mean, my jeans are a bit snug on me, which sucked, but I got to wear long sleeves, long pants, and sneakers for Halloween!  The worst part about the costume was the wig cap and wig - they pulled at my scalp a bit and made my head hot and itchy.  But, clothing-wise, this is hands-down the most comfortable costume of my life.  And practical, too!  The apron had big pockets, big enough for all of my essentials so that I didn't need to carry a purse with me!  Big win.

But another reason I was so happy with this costume is a bit more psychological.  Linda Belcher is a Mom, and she has a Mom Bod.  Of course, I know that people of any body type can dress as any character they want.  If I had the seamstress skills, I would dress as Uma Therman's Poison Ivy in a heartbeat, even though I pretty much have the opposite body type as Uma.  But I have never felt so in-character with my jiggly bits!  It was really refreshing to not feel like my body type is an inaccuracy.  It was probably the most comfortable in my own skin I've been underneath my costume!

Bonus costume photo!  Frosting is cake skin right?  Lemme lick it!

What did you do for Halloween?  Let me know or show me in the comments, I really want to see!

KBShimmer Be Scareful

KBShimmer's Be Scareful released in Fall 2015.  I got it a few weeks ago from a destash sale - I forget whose it was, but she had a lot of awesome indie polishes up!  I limited myself to one, and of course I chose a Halloween themed polish.

I applied Be Scareful using the sponge method.  First I brushed on one thin coat, to get an even coverage of the white crelly base, and then I sponged on two more layers of the glitter.

Isn't it so fun?  It looks like Halloween threw up on my nails!  I'm definitely glad that I used the sponging method.  The crelly base applies nicely, but the glitters are large enough that it's tough to brush them on.  I highly, highly recommend that you try out the sponge method!  Of course, if you do, you should protect your cuticles with some kind of peel-off barrier, because you'll get glitter all over your skin without it.

As you can see, it's not completely opaque - there's still some noticeable VNL.  I could have tried out one more layer, or layered this over a coat of solid white, but I wasn't all that concerned with getting full opacity.

Look at those tiny little orange glitters floating in there!  They're not super noticeable to the naked eye, but once you get this close up, it's hard to miss anything.

Oh, and when I went to bed after applying this polish, I got a pretty big surprise...

Be Scareful GLOWS IN THE DARK YASS!  I love a surprise glow in the dark nail polish!  I'm always like, "what's that weird light coming from - IT'S MY NAILS?!" and then I shove my hands in Derek's face and he's a bit concerned for my sanity.

Because it's Halloween, and because I still have plenty of the water decals that I used last Halloween, I decided to do some art on top of this!

I just love these decals!  They're so cute.  I mean - scary! :)

My friends at my crochet group were particularly thrilled with the spiderweb decal on my thumb.

Be Scareful isn't available anymore, but KBShimmer has an AMAZING lineup for autumn 2016!

What do you think of this polish?  What are your favorite KBShimmers?  Have your nails been celebrating Halloween all month long like mine have?  Let me know in the comments!

October nail art challenge Day 22: Critters

This design ended up being quite hodge-podge, but those are sometimes the best kind, right?

The most Halloween-y critters I could think of are bats and spiders, so they're all over my nails today!  I even have cobwebs on some of my nails!  Ahh!

My darker bat nails that you can barely see in these pictures have a fun surprise - they're glow in the dark!  I found Sinful Colors' glow in the dark top coat from their Halloween collection at Target the other day and I'm super excited about it!  Some of the bats are shadows in a glowing sky, others glow in a dark sky - because there's nothing creepier than glowing animals.

The glowing photos didn't turn out super great, and I couldn't even have the bottle in the shot

 because it glowed so bright that it outshone my glowing nails!!

This was a fun design in which I used mostly indie polish.  The black glitter is Heather's Hues Witches & Werewolves & Ghosts, Oh My!, the purple is another Heather's Hues from the Monster Mash Mani of the Month box that I got last month, called Vampirette.  It's soooo pretty!  I kind of wish I hadn't covered it up with so many bats.  The green on my thumbs is Creative Cuticles Nail Polish Ooze on the Rocks, and the neon orange that I used is a commercial brand - ORLY Ablaze.

The bats also come from the Monster Mash box - they're vinyls by Nails Redesigned.  And once again, the decals I used are by Naildrobe.

Here's the challenge image for you once again!  The clock is ticking on this one, with only three designs left!

My first time using water decals!

Okay, so even though I used a whole bunch of water decals back in October for the Halloween nail art challenge, the first time I actually used any decals was way back over the summer.  I just found this post in my archives and figured I'd come back from my long, holiday hiatus with this bright spring-y look!  Don't worry, I'll show you all of my Christmas and New Year's Eve looks soon - probably next week.

My cousin got me a whole bunch of nail art supplies for Christmas in 2014.  For months, all of those awesome things sat around waiting to be used.  I did play with the water decals a little bit a while back, but it was highly experimental and did not yield a blog-worthy mani.  So I finally decided to put them on the blog!

I really enjoy picking out nail polishes that match a certain item - a particular dress, a pair of pajama pants, a tissue box, or a nail decal.  In this case, I went with (from thumb to pinky) Zoya Demetria, Sinful Colors Why Not?, Pop-Arazzi Lime-ousine Ride, and Virago Varnish Faith Hope Courage.  I have Zoya's Naked system on my ring finger to even out my nail tone and brighten my white tips.

I took this second photo on my phone at a really well-lit store just to show my Mom, but I was really impressed with how shiny the lights made my nails look!

 

This was a really simple and fun mani!  In the future, I would totally take the time to use a decal on more than one nail - but this was actually kind of rushed because I started working on it a little bit too late for my schedule that day.  Applying the decals was really easy, though, and I don't see myself losing patience while trying to use more than one!

I did learn two things about water decals: One, they are not like temporary tattoos.  You don't place the design face down on your nail and then peel the paper off; you have to peel the design off of the paper and place it on your nail.  Using it like a temporary tattoo will give you a solid white decal.  And Two, decals are not like stickers.  Once you peel a decal off of the paper, you either have to put it on your nail or throw it away.  You can't stick it back on the paper, re-wet it later, and peel it off again.  I hope you guys can learn from my mistakes so you don't end up wasting two decals! :)

The brand for these decals is pretty vague - I tried Googling "Nail Accessory," which is on the packaging, and of course that mostly turned up thousands of different types of nail art tools and accessories.  I usually like to give you a link to the products that I use, but in this case I just can't find it!  The product code on this particular sheet of decals is BLE1518.

What do you think of this design?  Have you ever used decals before?  What is your favorite type of nail decal?  Let me know in the comments!

October nail art challenge Day 19: Pumpkins

Oh boy, was I ever excited for this theme!  Partly because of the awesome water decals that I have, and partly because I finally found a good rusty orange, my pumpkin mani is totally en pointe.

OPI It's a Piazza Cake is my favorite orange nail polish ever.  It's such a realistic pumpkin orange!  For the white backgrounds, I turned to my favorite white, Salon Perfect Sugar Cube.  And the green stem and vines on my middle finger is Finger Paints Monet Money.

I originally wanted to use the pumpkin string decals as a French tip border, and I considered either doing orange nails with white tips or vice-versa, but I decided against that when I tested it out on a piece of paper.  A dual-layer string of pumpkins still looked great to me!

The only thing I wish I could have done differently about this design is to make it glow in the dark.  Just imagine how great it would be if the jack-o-lantern faces could glow out at you, just like a real jack-o-lantern!  But the only glow in the dark polish I have is Dr. Franken-sparkle, which you saw in my ghosts mani, and that wouldn't really work for a pumpkin face.  Maybe I need to find a clear glow in the dark top coat...

Anyway, here's the challenge image as always!  Which design are you most excited for?  I still need to research how to do my nails as a historically accurate flapper...

October nail art challenge Day 16: Graveyard

Today's theme was another decal-heavy design, thanks to the awesome decals I got from Naildrobe!  I don't know what I would have done with this design if I didn't have the decals.  It definitely would have taken several hours!

Apparently I have a small cut on my middle finger.  I can't even see it in person!  I wonder how that got there.

As I've done before, the background is Salon Perfect Sugar Cube topped with Sally Hansen Big Smoky Topcoat.  Somehow I love that look so much more than a gray polish - I think it looks so much creepier!  I topped everything off with a matte topcoat to give it a slightly spookier, more natural look.

That ding in the polish came from trying to pinch an air bubble out from under the decal when I laid it down. 

I decided to add some grass to some of my nails, for a little bit more depth.  I did that by painting on Finger Paints Monet Money using the dry brush technique.  (I applied my coat of Big Smoky after doing the green on these nails, to make the grass a bit darker.)  Sadly, the green made the gravestones pretty hard to see, but overall I really love this design!

As always, here's the challenge image!  I'm very much looking forward to pumpkins in a few days.  And I really, really need to research how to do my nails for my costume!  I'm going as a historically accurate flapper, and nail polish as an industry and a technology wasn't very advanced back then.  Which of the remaining themes are you most excited for?  Have you been participating in this challenge?  Let me know in the comments!

October nail art challenge Day 10: Trick or Treat - plus #mavenmeetup!

What is the number one most important part about trick or treating?  Candy!!!!!

There are all kinds of candies on my nails for today's theme.  You've got Skittles, candy corn, Reese's Pieces, M&Ms, Nerds, and (attempted) Twizzlers.

Then, on my thumbs, I have a house (is it haunted? is it the house all the kids avoid while trick or treating because it's just too scary? or is it the coolest house on the block because the owners go all out for Halloween? who knows!) and a dark tree in front of a mist-covered moon.  Because nothing says trick or treating like the creepy house down the street and a full moon in a misty sky!

The house, tree, and candy corns are water slide decals from Naildrobe.  I used Julep Bunny as a background for every nail, with a coat of Sally Hansen Big Smoky Topcoat on my thumbs for a darker look.

I used a whole bunch of polish for the candies:
Zoya Tilda (green)
Sally Hansen CSM Red My Lips (red)
Finger Paints First Edition (purple)
Zoya Darcy (yellow)
OPI How Great Is Your Dane? (Reese's brown)
Zoya Nyssa (M&Ms brown)
Sally Hansen Orange Zest (orange)
Finger Paints Margritte's Masterpiece (blue)
Essie Strut Your Stuff (bright blue)
Sally Girl Peace (neon green)
Sally Girl Crazy (neon orange)
China Glaze I Brake For Colour (pink)

And to seal it all in, I used a super-thick coat of Out the Door to avoid streak marks, then Zoya's matte top coat - because candy is more matte than glossy.

Today's challenge is yet another one that forced me to really think outside the box and get creative - and, most importantly, trust in my nail art skills.  I'm having so much fun with this year's Halloween challenge; possibly even more fun than last year!

 

Here's the challenge image for you - I really hope you'll join in on the fun, even though it's already the 10th.  This challenge has been a lot of fun for me so far, and there are some really fun themes coming up!

This past Thursday, Jane Park, CEO of Julep, hosted a meetup for Julep Mavens right here in Washington, DC!  I only heard about it like three days beforehand.  We met at the W Hotel in DC for drinks, sneak peeks at November's new polishes (hint: they're AWESOME), and sneak peeks at some other amazing beauty products coming out in the next few months.  I'm honestly not sure if I'm allowed to talk about them, but they're awesome, too!  I don't usually get excited about non-polish beauty products, but what Julep has in store for us is great.

The ladies swatching the new polishes - yes, we got to open them up and play with them!  Wee!

Jane also chatted with us for a while, and she told us about her family's history in Korea and her own history with starting the company.  It was tons of fun, and it was so nice to meet the CEO of a company in such a laid-back, casual setting!  Jane is incredibly sweet and down-to-earth.  

We got to ask Jane questions about polish maintenance, how Julep polishes are conceptualized and created, and all sorts of other polish- and beauty-related tips and tricks. 

I wish the lighting was better in there!  We're so grain-y!

I really hope that there will be more Maven Meetups in the future - both in DC and all over the country!  This was a really really fun night.