As often happens when I'm putting together nail art - especially in a process of having to put together quite as much nail art as I tend to do during the spooky seasons - I went into this mani with a bit of a plan but ultimately ended up changing things as I was in process. I tend to do this style of mani whenever I'm really trying to hit a theme - just look back through my Instagram feed - and I knew I was going to pull it out this Halloween, but it definitely didn't turn out how I initially thought, but in the best way. 

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Readers of this blog, even casual ones, will know that I don't often do nail art with a white base. This is not because I don't like white base designs, but instead because I tend to vehemently hate working with white polish and avoid it entirely as a result. It's just not my thing. That said, recently I picked up a white créme polish that I find applies really nicely and without any of the rage that I'm used to with white polishes. Snow by Prairie Crocus Polish is literally just a basic, crisp white créme polish, but it doesn't have any of the chalkiness or lumpiness that tend to make me avoid white bases all together. The maker, when I picked this up from her, recommended thicker coats and promised that it has a quick drying formula so the thicker coats won't be gloopy, and she was definitely right. For this mani, I applied two thicker coats of Snow to all of my nails and it worked beautifully - not rage whatsoever.

The one thing I knew going into this mani was that I wanted to pair purple and green together - one of my favorite color pairings of life, but particularly during Halloween. I grabbed for two fairly bright crémes that I thought would work really well together for the witchy look I was going for and then also grabbed a metallic purple because I find that adding a metallic polish to this type of design adds a nice texture and dimension. As I usually do, I just applied light swipes of each polish, building slowly until i got to the design I wanted.

For my stamping, I also decided to keep it fairly simple. On my middle finger, I used this very sort of Harry Potter referencing image of a book, a quill and a smattering of stars. I actually chose this image because I had a different plan in mind for my ring finger, but I did that was second and some bad etching in my stamping plate necessitated a plan change at that point. On my ring finger, I ended up going for this sort of swirling stars image and then a trio of bats, and I think the final design really works even if it wasn't quite as witchy as I was intending.

Once I was happy with the design, I sealed in those middle two fingers with a water based top coat to prevent smudging and then finished with a generous layer of quick dry glossy top coat to all of my nails and voila!

Is it surprising that this mani is making me rethink that I might want to do more white base nails in the future? Probably. Actually, pretty much definitely. Still, I do love the crispness and brightness of a white base and you can literally put anything on top of it and get real impact and contrast. As I said, this mani is levels of not what I thought it was going to be, but very much in a good way!

Don't forget to check back every day in October for more Halloween themed nail art and be sure to head over to @pblnails on Instagram for video tutorials for all of my nail art designs.

Thanks for reading!