Hey guys! One of my favorite nail art designs to do every year at Halloween is a graveyard mani - it's definitely become kind of a classic. This year, as I was considering what I wanted to do, I couldn't get the idea of neon out of my head and I got this idea to do a sort of psychadelic graveyard design. Anyone remember The Hilarious House Of Frightenstein? I thought that it was obscure, but apparently this little, weird Canadian TV show is a bit of a cult classic. Anyway, I remember it from when I was a kid and my clearest memory is of the Wolfman DJ who dances in front of a psychdelic green screen. Check out this little clip from Youtube if you're completely confused as to what I'm talking about. That was definitely my inspiration for this mani... And I mean, talk about a random bit of inspiration, but it worked out!

Anyway, let's get to the nail art, shall we?

I have to admit, I tried not to do a watermarble. I tried various smooshing techniques and considered using a makeup sponge, but in the end I decided that I really had to give the watermarble a shot because it was the necessary technique for the swirling psychadelic look that I liked. I actually ended up going with a silver holo base rather than white for this mani because... Honestly? I hate working with white bases and I was feeling too overwhelmed with the fact that I was going to do a watermarble at all to start with an annoying base. (This is my process 100%! lol)

For the water marble, I wanted a full spectrum neon rainbow, so of course I grabbed for my Color Club Neons. For my water marble, I went through the spectrum twice to create 12 rings for my bullseye and then used a tiny dotting tool to create this sort of swirled pattern. (If you want to actually see how I did it, head over to @pblnails to check out the video tutorial, because it's kind of hard to explain with any sort of brevity.) I also applied cuticle barrier all over my finger, front side and back, to aid in clean up. 

For the dip, I tried to choose what I thought would be the best part of the design to transfer to my nail. I wanted to have a good swirl in the image and also fairly tight bits. Once I was dipped, I cleaned up the excess with an orange stick before pulling my finger out, removed the cuticle barrier, and crisped up the edges with a clean up brush. 

For the stamping, I wanted to use all images from the What's Up Nails A012 Happy Halloween stamping plate, so I tried to plan out my design from the start. Also, I did have some bubbling in my watermarble, so I tried to choose images that would camoflage that somewhat. I chose mostly trees, crossed, and zombies for this design. I also wanted to layer my stamping, with white underneath the black, to give a little bit of dimension and pop, so I started by transferring the design in white and then layered the black over top of it.

Once I was happy with my stamping, I sealed it in with a water based top coat and followed with a quick dry glossy top coat for shine and voila!

Not gonna lie, I'm actually so happy with how this water marble turned out that it's making me want to do more watermarbles - and considering just how much I didn't want to do one for this mani, that's kind of insane. I also think I really did manage to capture that inspiration just the way I wanted to - who knew?

Be sure to head over to Cosmetic Proof and See The World In PINK today to check out more Halloween themed Nail Art for #CBBxManiMonday. Also, check back here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday leading up to Halloween for the rest of the back half of my #12NailsOf Halloween!

Thanks for reading!