Design 1: Halloween Skittle
I particularly loved this "Skittle" design. For those who don't speak nail art-- skittle is when each nail has a different design, but the same theme. Or the same design, but different colors. Or the same colors, but different design. You get the idea. I got this design from a video by user "cutepolish" on YouTube. I really like her designs, and I highly recommend her as a teacher for beginners. She is very good at breaking popular designs down into simple methods.
I did have trouble with the Mummy; I had to re-do it. I also had to re-do the Jack-o-lantern, because the first time I used the wrong orange, it was too dark and gel-like, too sheer. I could barely see the face. So the second time, I mixed a bit of white into it, and I came up with a pale, cream orange. Perfect!
Then like I said, the Mummy... Well the first time, I goofed up on the lines and angles. It was a complete mess. the lines were running together, it really didn't look good. I actually rushed through it, and that's such a no-no. You should always breathe and take it easy when doing nail art. See, the white base color application wasn't smooth, because I was trying to use a striper brush to paint it on. My white Kiss polish with a striper brush was all I had! Trying to cover your whole nail a solid white with regular brush (Sinful Colors, very cheap at Walmart). That was a nice solid white, opaque, and went on smooth in a single fluid coat. Then the black stripes I painted on with my Kiss black striper polish went on smoothly.
On the right hand, that tobstone/graveyard scene... The original artist did an obre for the sky color, blending pink at the bottom up to purple at the top, using a makeup sponge. At the time, I didn't have any sponges in the house, so I just used plain light purple. But I think it still came out nice.
Design 2: Halloween Candy
Ah, m&m's! One of my favorite candies. But why did I put this with the Halloween designs? Well, I was going with a "Halloween Candy" theme. On my left hand, I had m&m's. On my right hand, I had Candy Corns. When I was a kid, I used to love getting those miniature packets of m&m's in my candy bag during Trick-Or-Treating. Actually, as soon as I got home, I would sort my candy. First thing I did was sort my candies in little piles from my most favorite, to my least favorite. Chocolates were put in the "absolute favorite" pile. Then things like caramels, suckers, gum, gummies, pop rocks, Nerds, butter scotch, candy corns, etc. went in the "these are ok" pile. Finally, plain old hard fruit candies (like Jolly Ranchers) or other fruity candies went in the "I'll eat these if everything else is gone and I'm desperate" pile. lol.
The m&m's were not as hard to paint as I thought they would be. Again, they were a "cutepolish" design. She broke it down in easy steps. For the M-- 3 lines, connect the tops with M-like arches on top, then draw straight little lines on the bottoms of each line. Use your polish brush to paint a rounded color dot on your nail.
The candy corns were even easier. I've seen people layer the colors in many different ways. But I chose to work from top to bottom, in layers. I painted the entire nail yellow. Then used the regular polish brush to paint a yellow stripe across the middle. Finally a white strip across the tip. I didn't need any tools or guide strips with this method.
Design 3: Tiny Spiders
Expect for the solid orange background, this design was done almost entirely with dotting tools. A black dot for the spiders. Two smaller white dots for their eyes. A tooth pick to make their tiny legs and white dots in between the spiders. Since these are babies, I'm guessing the white dots were meant to be... Eggs? I don't know, lol. The original Youtube artist had much longer nails than I did. So I was trying to cram this whole design on my tiny, short nails. But I think I did ok.
Design 4: Jack Skellington
Another "cutepolish" design, super easy but great for Halloween! The original artist started with a black base coat on the striped nails, and used white polish and a striper brush to add the stripes. But I did the opposite, starting with a white base coat and adding black stripes. I try to avoid lack base colors as much as possible, as they are very difficult to remove. But as you can see, the results were pretty much the same and looked quite nice!
Design 5: Glowing Pumpkins and Frankenstein's Bride
These two designs (one on the left hand, one on the right hand) I borrowed from Robin Moses on YouTube. While "cutepolish" is my favorite nail artist for cute and simple designs, Robin Moses is my favorite for more complex designs. She is sort of my "nail art idol", lol. This woman can literally paint a realistic, detailed portrait on a single fingernail! That takes an insane amount of talent and she certainly has my respect.
I totally fell in love with her Glowing Pumpkins/Frankenstein's Bide design, because I loved the way she made the pumpkin faces look like they were really glowing! So spooky with the black background and the facial features, lined first with red, then orange, then yellow, for that "fire" effect. My nails are sooooo narrow, unfortunately. They were also short at this time. So I was unable to get a nice, neat design, or capture the whole effect. But for a first attempt, it was ok.
The Frankestein's Bride is what I was really excited to do. Again, I'm nowhere near as good as Robin... But everyone has to start somewhere, right? Also, I did goof up, I put the lips and eyes going in the wrong direction, lol. Its supposed to be as if her hair is at the top (pinky) and her eyes and lips are in order below that. I didn't paint eye shadow, or the eyebrows over the eyes. I couldn't get the arch right. I just REALLY wanted to paint those eyes! I saw them on the video thumbnail, and I was like "Wow! How did she paint such detailed eyes?!" After watching the video, she broke it down-- it was mostly dotting tools and layering different colors of dots, one color over the other. I wanted to see if I could to it, and I think I did a pretty good job, even if there are no eyebrows, or eye shadow, lol.
Design 6: Black Flames and Spiders
The original artist on YouTube did this design as her take on "inclinations after being bitten by a spider". There were layers of purple, blue, orange and golden hughes, with black flames swirling up through them and a spider on every other nail. I loved the look in her video, but I actually wasn't too happy with my results... Mostly because her nails were REALLY long, so there was a ton of room to really capture the design and all those lovely colors. But my nails were sooooo short, so I was trying to cram all those colors and layers on a tiny space. I guess I did "ok" working with what I have. But everything is so tiny and mashed together, you can't really tell what it is, lol. I ended up wiping it off literally an hour later and doing the below "stitches" design, instead.
Design 7: Stitches
So I'm guessing this design is going with the Frankenstein theme? Like different parts stitched together. I just loved how basic it looked, and how cute it was. Again, I got this idea from a YouTube user. I followed her instruction and cut some painter's tape in long, tapered angles. I painted the entire nail purple, let it dry, then placed the corners of the tape across the middle of the nail. This theft the areas above and below the tape exposes. The area closest to my cuticles, I painted green. The areas at the tips, I painted orange. I peeled the tape off and voila! 3 different colors, with clean lines. Then I took a black striper and painted a line along the edges of the colors, and painted stitches going through the lines. Turned out great and it was a good design for even short nails.
Design 8: Spiders And Polka Dots Skittle
Another Skittle design, with Halloween colors, I saw on YouTube and wanted to try. I LOVED how the dots just seemed to pop! But there was a trick to that, explained by the original artist: First, Make all the dots WHITE. Wait 5 minutes, then go over some of them with light purple and yellow. this makes them more visible and bright. Otherwise, if you simply paint them over the dark purple polish, they will barely be visible. For the other nails, white or light purple base colors, webs and spiders. use dotting tools of varying sizes to make the spiders and their eyes. Same technique for the eyes, first a white dot, then go over with yellow to make the yellow show up. Black pupils with a tooth pick tip.
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