In the spirit of Holo-ween and Frankenpolish!

I've definitely been on a Halloween nail art kick all month!  And a holo kick.  Thus, Holo-ween.  I know, I know, it's not original, but it's definitely a good pun.

I sort of did this mani twice.  I originally did a vertical gradient using each of these colors, but I didn't like it much.  Shortly after I finished I realized that I should have done this version - sort of a gradient French tip design.

The purple polish is Heather's Hues Vampirette, which you saw me use last Halloween.  The red is Firecracker Lacquer Stop and Smell the Blossoms (from the Powerpuff Girls box, ahh!), and the green is Daily Hues Nail Lacquer Fiona.

 

I definitely wanted this entire mani to be holographic, but my only black holo is Gothic Gala Lacquers The Search for Spock - which is beautiful and stunning, but leans a little bit purple, and I wanted a truer black for this design.

And, I don't have a holo yellow or orange!  Well, I do have Gothic Gala Lacquers My Partner in Crime, but it's a more mustard-y yellow, and I wanted bright yellow, more like candy corn.  Yes, I am picky, but that's what being an artist is all about, right?  Knowing what you want and making it happen?

So, I looked at my polish collection and thought, "these would look good mixed together!"  And I had several old, unusable bottles of top coat lying around, so I cleaned them out and mixed up some frankenpolish!  I'm calling them "Kate Concoctions" so that I can have a "brand" to tag if I ever use them again.

The first one I made is the orange, which I dubbed Pumpkin Sparkle.  It's a mixture of mostly OPI It's a Piazza Cake and Deborah Lippmann Don't Stop Believin, with a bit of Sally Hansen Orange Zest and a dash of Salon Perfect Traffic Cone (because I used too much Piazza Cake and the color was looking darker than I wanted it).  Then I added three different holos to the mix: China Glaze Fairy Dust, Deviant Polish Lori, and Sally Hansen Disco Ball.  I think Disco Ball shows up the best.  In the end I decided to add literally like 6 drops of Zoya Jesy, both to brighten up the color and add a touch more sparkle.

Next, I made the black, which I named Night Sky and I think came out the very best.  It's also the simplest: a large amount of  Sinful Colors Black on Black, with a couple drops of The Search for Spock, and the three holos that I added to the orange - Lori, Fairy Dust, and Disco Ball.  I'm sooo happy with how this came out, and quite happy that I made it in a full-sized bottle!

I made the yellow last, and I kind of like everything about it the least.  The name, A-maize-ing, isn't great but I couldn't think of anything better.  The holos barely show up in it, even though I added plenty of all three, which is the most disappointing of all.  The color is mostly China Glaze Happy Go Lucky, with a dash of Finger Paints Master Muse and just 3 drops of Orange Zest.  I suppose every indie maker winds up with slight disappointments like this!

What do you think of my Concoctions? Is there anything you'd like to see me do for Halloween nail art?  There's still time - 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!

October nail art challenge day 28: Monsters

Well, here we are.  The second to last theme of this year's Halloween nail art challenge.  Today's theme is monsters, and I cooked up a lot of them on my nails!

 

Once again, I had to use the dreaded flash because the deep green of Frankenstein's monster wouldn't show up without it.

My nails house a mummy, Frankenstein's monster, a witch, and a vampire.

On the opposite hand, I painted something that abstractly represents each creature - except for the mummy, for which I couldn't think of anything else to represent.  So I painted the Bride of Frankenstein['s mosnter], some stitches to represent the monster himself, witch-y colored stripes, and dripping blood.  (Sadly, the purple that I used didn't show up very well at the top of my ring finger - nor did the drips show up very well on top of the purple metallic background.  Oh well!)

On my thumbs, I painted a werewolf on the left and a full moon (sort of) on the right.

I used a whole bunch of different polishes for this look, and once again it's much easier if I just list them rather than describe which polish I used where.

Salon Perfect: Sugar Cube, Oil Slick, Loopy Lime, Escape to Neverland, A Royal Affair, and Traffic Cone
Zoya: Ziv, Nyssa, and Ana
Finger Paints: Monet Money and Ch-art-coal Black
OPI My Dogsled is a Hybrid
China Glaze Intelligence, Integrity & Courage
Heather's Hues Vampirette
Creative Cuticles Nail Polish O Negative Please
Sally Hansen Big Smoky Topcoat

I want to point out the awesomeness that is the vampire's skin color.  I applied a coat of Vampirette, thinking that I would do a smaller vampire face on a purple background, but then decided against that.  And I didn't want to bother with removing the polish and starting over from basecoat, so I put a coat of Ana on top of the purple.  It turned out to be a sort of grayish-purple skin color, perfect for the skin of the undead!

Other than the witch-y stripes and the dripping blood, which I made using vinyls from KB Shimmer and Nails Redesigned, respectively, all of these monsters were made totally freehand.  It took forever but it was a lot of fun!

All that's left in this month's challenge is nails to match my costume.  My options are limited because of limited nail polish technology in the 1920s, but I'm pretty excited for my costume!  We're going to be having some relatives over for the weekend of Halloween, so I might not have that blog post ready until the Monday after Halloween, but you'll definitely get to see my design for my flapper costume!

What are you dressing up as for Halloween this year?  Do you plan on painting your nails to match?  Let me know in the comments!

October nail art challenge Day 13: Ghosts

Last year's Halloween challenge also had a day of ghosts, and to be totally honest I didn't do much different this year.  But that's okay because ghosts!

I did use some new polishes this year, thanks to the Monster Mash-themed Mani of the Month box that I got last month.  Heather's Hues Witches & Werewolves & Ghosts, Oh My! is the embodiment of Halloween: a black background with purple, green, and orange glitters.  And Proper Polish Dr. Franken-sparkle is another awesome Halloween glitter polish with its assortment of different shaped glitters.

You might recognize the third ghostly background as Twisted Colors P.S. I Enjoy Acid Pops.  I used that one as a background on my entire left hand last year.  It's the perfect toxic-green for Halloween!  I guess its green pigmentation is extra strong, because the green shows through and turned my ghosts on those nails greenish themselves.

I did spice things up a little bit this year by using some water decals from Naildrobe.  I love all of the Halloween decals I got this year!  Don't worry, you'll definitely be seeing the rest of the designs throughout the rest of this challenge. ;)

The white and black that I used for the hand-painted ghosts are Salon Perfect Sugar Cube and Nina Ultra Pro Black, respectively.  This design was pretty simple but a lot of fun - especially since I got to use such awesome background colors for my ghosties!

As always, here's the giveaway image.  The month may be almost half over, but it's never too late to join in the fun!  Have you been participating in this challenge?  Let me know in the comments!

Update 10/14!

HOLD THE PHONE.  Dr. Frankensparkle GLOWS IN THE DARK.  Whaaaat!

I noticed this when I went to bed last night, and there was an odd glowing coming from some of my nails.  You can even almost make out the outline of the ghosts on two of my nails, since the ghost decals are on a clear background!  So cool!!!

(The ghost nails in question are the two at the bottom left.)

I even woke up in the middle of the night for whatever reason and found my nails still glowing.  How is that even possible?!  Thanks, Proper Polish, for giving me a super fun surprise! :D

Heather's Hues: Santa Baby

Indie polish maker Heather's Hues ran a 12 Days of Christmas giveaway from December 1-12.  Each day had a bunch of different prizes from a few different sponsors.  And I won the first day!  Yay!!!

I got 4 full-sized polishes and 1 mini polish from a few different indies, as well as some gift card codes.  I'll swatch the rest of the polishes that I got sometime soon, but I really wanted to show you the one from Heather's Hues herself now because it's Christmas themed!

Heather's Hues: Santa Baby

Santa Baby is a super fun red jelly loaded with glitters.  The glitters spread on really smoothly, which is awesome.  There are several different sizes of glitter, and they're the perfect size for my taste!  Glitters bigger than this don't really spread very well, which makes the polish harder to work with.  This one is quite smooth and I really like the distribution of glitter.

(For whatever reason, my camera SUPER oversaturates red polishes.  I actually had to desaturate this one a little to prevent it from looking like my nails were bleeding!)

Two coats yielded full coverage, but I used three for more layers of glitter.  (As always!)

This is a really great polish to add to your Christmas collection, though it could easily be used in any red-themed mani.  (I can see myself using this for a Valentine's Day mani!)

dat macro tho.

Santa Baby is so far my only Heather's Hues polish, but I'm definitely adding this brand to my list of indies to try more from!  Do you have any Heather's Hues?  What are your other favorite indie polishes?  Let me know in the comments!