Like a bat out of hell

Hello lovelies!

Sadly today is the last day of the This is Halloween Challenge! Sad face.

But that also means a recreation mani, and boy do I have a recreation for you!

After looking through a lot of the manis that were done, I noticed a theme for a few of them: Spooky silhouettes in front of a moon.

This one by @paperkraftnpolish on Instagram was the main inspiration for my recreation mani. I think she did such a spectacular job.

My inspiration mani

Here is my recreation of her beautiful bats design.

Bats Silhouette

I decided for these to mattify the blue gradient before putting on the black detailing, which meant that I couldn't top coat to protect the design, but hey, these are the things we do for nail art..:)

Bats Silhouette

Bats Silhouette

What I used:

ulta3 'midnight fever', 'blue heaven', 'blue bird' and 'lily white'

essence 'black is back' and 'walk on air'

Hope you liked these as much as I enjoyed doing them!

As always, thanks for stopping by!
xNai

                                                            

I want candy...

Hello there lovelies!
Today is October 30, and as we inch ever closer to Halloween, we have more manis!
Today's theme is Trick or Treat, now obviously I chose treat, because who DOESN'T love Halloween candy?! Especially this Aussie girl who's been denied her whole life the joy that is Halloween and especially begging for food in kickass costumes!

Toffe apple nails

I've done toffee apple nails for this challenge, as they always look just so delicious, with their brown gooey goodness and the rich red of the apples.

Toffee Apples

Here's the nails at a slightly different angle, which caught the details a little better, I reckon.

Mattified Toffee Apples

And then here, I mattified the red of the apple, just to see what it would look like. Now I realise that by virtue of the toffee covering everything, the apples are always shiny and apple-like, but I really love the effect of the suede red with the glistening orangey toffee...

What I used:

essence 'fame fatale'

Savvy 'Tequila Sunrise'

Rimmel Matte top coat

Now I'm off to do my recreation mani...just gotta choose between the dozens of amazing manis done so far! Check some of them out below.

As always, thanks for stopping by!

xNai

                                                   

She's a brick...

Well hello there!

Today is the 29th, and that means graveyard nails, and a fairly pic heavy post.

I decided to give you step by step images of what happened to my nails for this challenge!

Blue Gradient

I started with a blues gradient for this mani, and I used 5, count 'em, FIVE blues to achieve this look.
I also didn't use top coat yet, as obviously, this is only step one!
The blues are (lightest to darkest): ulta3 'bluebird', 'blue heaven', Sinful Colors 'why not', essence 'Walk on Air', and ulta3 'midnight fever'
Also, this is probably the fakest my nails have ever looked to me. So strange - they look like stick on nails, eh?

Blues Gradient

This is me trying out a new hand angle. Thoughts?

Then, because I loved the gradient so much, I did it on both hands, and on my right hand, I chucked a bunch of different top coats, to see how it would look.

L-R we have Seche Vite, a Spectra Flair top coat from Gloss 'n Sparkle's Etsy store, my Rimmel Matte top coat, and two essences - 'glitter top coat', and 'space queen'.

Slightly blurred to show the holo, and the glitter sparkles.

For step two, I did a bit of a watermarble. I used ulta3 'lily white' and Revlon 'just tinted top coat', to create the alternating marble, so the blues would show through.

Any clues yet as to my design?

I had real trouble finding the right polishes to achieve the alternation in the marble. Obviously I couldn't use a fast drying top coat, and the Just Tinted spread so nicely on its own, but was a pain in the backside when it came to spreading in the white. Oh well, managed it eventually!

Tada! Completed graveyard mani!
I decided I wanted to do something a little bit out of the ordinary for this, not your typical skull and crossbones, cemetery at midnight mani, which I know I could never do justice to anyway, so I was thinking laterally, and came up with this: a watery death/grave!

The idea is someone's drowning, and that's their hand sticking up out of the waves, calling for help that will never come...Macabre, right? :)

For the hand I used 2 essence nudes, 'nude it!' and 'toffee to go', and painted it onto a plastic ziplock bag first, allowed it to dry for a couple hours, then stuck it straight onto my nail like a decal! Applied some topcoat, and was good to go!

I am really SO happy with this mani, thought it looked magnificent from beginning to end.
What do you guys reckon? Too morbid, or just right?

As always, thanks for stopping by!
xNai


ps: Points if you can recognise the reference in the title...;)
                                                     

The best wiz and witchard o' their age!

Hello there lovelies!

So, as I have previously mentioned, I'm just a little bit of a PotterHead...Just a touch of the mania..:)

So for today's nails, as it is the 26th of October, and the day for witches in the This Is Halloween Challenge, I decided to recreate one of my very favourite Potter manis: The Final Battle.

The Final Battle

These nails depict the last and intense battle between Voldemort (that's right, I'm a badass. Fear of the name only increases fear of the thing itself...) and Harry. It's a movie reference rather than a book reference, because I don't believe this is what JK would have been picturing, and nor is it what I picture...ANYWAY.

I first saw these nails on @trincess on Instagram, and instantly fell in love with them. OMFG, they're glorious!

Granted mine aren't quite as insanely cool, but I think I did a decent job considering I'm not actually an artist...:)

On the thumb I did the Deathly Hallows:

Deathly Hallows

And on the other hand, I did the house colours and stylised crest again. This is the first halloween mani I've done for both hands, and how could I not? It's Harry!

House Colours and Crest

What I used (prepare for a long list...):

For the Final Battle:

essence 'black is back', 'LIME UP!', 'fateful desire', and 'fame fatal'.

ulta3 'frog prince', 'banana split', 'lemon', and 'mango mayhem'.

For the Deathly Hallows and Right Hand:

essence 'black is back', 'fame fatal'

ulta3 'banana split'

Revlon 'Metallic', 'Emerald', 'Royal'.

Chi Chi 'Glamourama', and 'Bronze Ambition'

Anywho, I hope you enjoy these as much as I genuinely did making them!
As always, thanks for stopping by!
xNai

                                           

Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones!

Hello there!

Today is October 22, and as we inch ever closer to Halloween, I have some more funkalicious themed nails for you!

Today's theme is gradient.

I love me some gradient. I gotta tell you, I love that it's such a wonderful effect for so simple a technique! Aside from monstrous clean up, (like with black - could have kicked myself...), it's kinda my go-to technique.

So here we have some black and white gradient, with fading bones. I've done used this effect before, with greens and fading dots (which I'm sure you'll see sometime in the future on this here bloggyblog), and I loved the way it looked then, so I knew I wanted to do something similar. The issue then was what? I didn't want to infringe on any of the other days' themes, and so this idea was born.

I do realise, of course, that they look a bit more like dog bones than skeleton bones, but hey, you win some, you lose some, amiright?

What I used:

Essence 'Black is Back'

ulta3 'lily white'

Don't forget to check out some of the dozens of other awesome manis for this challenge!

Anywho,

Thanks for dropping by,

xNai

                                                            

There's a light...over at the Frankenstein place

Hello again lovelies!

Today is October 19, and as such I have some bats for you!

I didn't want to be too literal with the bats thing, so I decided to take it to a vampirey castle, in the dead of night, with some bats flying up and away into the distance.

In this next pic, I decided to mattify half of the mani, to see what it would look like, and to give a stone-like effect to the castle. I think it turned out rather well!

And then on the thumb, what better than some Batman?
My fingers don't meet up nicely to make those joined up images, especially not my thumb (I swear I'm missing a joint there...), so I decided to chuck in some random Batmaniness. Cuz I can!

What I used:

For the blue I layered Essie 'Aruba Blue' over Ulta3 'Midnight Fever' - such a gorgeous, rich blue. I did the mani by itself afterwards, and I don't wear plain manis often.

Essence 'Black is Back'

Ulta3 'Banana Split'

Rimmel 'Matte Finish' top coat

As always, thanks for dropping by!
xNai

PS, you all totally have some Rocky Horror in your heads now, don't you? Moo hahaha :)


                                          

Braaaiiins...

Hello lovelies!

So today we have one of the This is Halloween Challenge manis that I'm rather proud of - zombies!

Today's mani was inspired by an artist I've been following on Instagram for a while now. Her handle there is @spooksieboo - go check her out.
She has an Etsy shop I believe, where you can go and order paintings of you and your loved ones zombified! I'll link it once I've found it, as right now the link isn't on her profile.
Edit: This is the link to her easy shop where you can purchase prints of some of her more popular designs, and sometimes even order customs pics...CLICK ME!

Anywho, on with the show!

I've always loved the eyes on her paintings, so I decided to replicate those here, with the trademark green of slowly decaying zombie skin, and of course some barely healing gashes, poorly stitched up.
And of course, a matte finish on these, because I felt it just more fitting.

What I used:

Essie 'Navigate Her' and 'Mojito Madness'

Essence 'Black is Back' and 'Fateful Desire'

Ulta3 'Lily White'

Rimmel 'Matte Finish'

What do you think? Did I do the challenge, and Spooksieboo's paintings justice?

As always, thanks for stopping by!
xNai

                                               

Jack be nimble, Jack be quick

Today is October 12, and you know what that means!

Jack O'Lanterns!

For these nails I decided to keep it super simple, and just create the basic ideas of jack O'lanterns. (should all those be capitalised? hmm..)

You can see the detailing in the actual pumpkin background better in this pic and the next one - I used two different shades of orange (essence 'Wake Up!' and Ulta3 'Mango Mayhem') to create the shading, and then just a black (essence 'Black is Back) with a teeny tiny paintbrush, and LOTS of patience for the faces.

I wanted to give you a range of faces, so we have two nice/benign, and two seriously evil looking' mofos.

Hope you've enjoyed these, and don't forget to check out some of the other incredible entries!
If you're on instagram, check out the #thisishalloweenchallenge tag - I and a number of others have been uploading there as well, and there are some seriously incredible entries; @strawbrie never fails to impress.

Thanks for dropping by
xNai

                                          

Wee Little Ghosties

Hello there fellow Halloweenies!

Today's October 8th, and that means ghosties!

This mani comes in 2 parts.

When thinking about how I would go about this, I originally thought about pacman and the ghosts there, and automatically wanted to recreate some of the amazing pacman nails I've seen. Then I realised that's not very Halloweeny, so I came up with these instead!

"Plain white?!" I hear you exclaiming. Fear not my lovelies. I have not forgotten the task set me by Bec!
There is more here than meets the eye.

The white is two coats of Ulta3 Lily White - by far and away the best white I have used - beautiful streak free application in 2 easy coats. Woo!

And the piece de resistance!

GLOW IN THE DARK FLIPPING GHOSTS!
The theory is that you can't see ghosts until you turn off the lights, so what better way to pay homage than to only see them at night time?!

I thought it was rather brilliant myself...:)

For the glow in the dark I used BYS glow in the dark top coat, and very painstakingly painted on little ghosties and a boo nail!
Getting that pic was then such a challenge in and of itself!

Anywho, hope you enjoy this as much as I did!
xNai

                                             

Poiple and Owange

Hello there lovelies!
So today marks the second of our 'This is Halloween' challenges -  the dreaded watermarble!

I'm not gonna lie to you, I kinda intentionally went into this one with like zero inspiration, and the only thoughts to cross my mind were 'please don't mess up, please don't mess up, please don't mess up...WHY WON'T YOU SPREAD?!'
Thus, you get simple, and still themed, sorta, watermarble!

Orange and purple watermarble

For this watermarble, I used revlon polishes, Siren and Rock, because I figured they're thin enough to spread.
I had wanted to add in some black and green, but none of my blacks at the time were spreading, and the green was just dropping to the bottom of the cup. Sad face.
Still, these colours look wicked together.

In more direct light

You can see that I've dipped two fingers in at a time, as the flowers sort of meet between my fingers!

Then I decided to mattify it using my Rimmel Matte Finish top coat.

Mattified Marble

I like the way it sort of sharpened the edges of the marble. It might have something to do with the fact that without the glare from the glossy finish, you can really see the design. The actual colours don't look quite as rich though. You win some, you lose some!

And that's that for day to of the 'This is Halloween' challenge!
Go have a look at some of the other challengers, there are some stunning, and really inspired manis around here!

Thanks for stopping by,
xNai

                                                   

They can't hear you when you scream...

Hello lovelies!

So I know I should have posted this earlier, but I just was feverishly painting my nails, and completely forgot!

Today marks the start of the "This Is Halloween" Challenge, created by Bec over at Lacquer Dreams, and I am SO excited!

We don't really celebrate Halloween in Australia, much to the dismay of my entire childhood, so this is the next best thing for me!

On with the show!

Here are my horror movie nails.

Horror Movies
L-R: Random vampire, blood and gore reference, Saw, Jason, Freddy and Scream

Friggen love these. Painted them a while ago, and been just dying to show people!

I may have gotten a little carried away with the saw swirls, but, hey, what canya do? :)

Go check out all the other lovely ladies taking part in this challenge! The links are down here, somewhere..haha

Have a good day,
xNai