When I sat down to start putting together ideas for this year's marathon of Halloween Nail Art, today's mani was the first design idea that I ended up writing down and I spent weeks anxious to get it onto my nails. (Why, yes, even though I was fully ready to start doing Halloween mani's on August 1, I did force myself to wait until September to get started...) I literally pretty much knew exactly what this was going to look like on my nails as soon as I thought of it and the final product is pretty much exactly what I had pictured down to the colors I used for my reverse stamping. That is definitely not always the case, but for this one I'm really, really glad that I was able to bring what I pictured to life.

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I have to say that finding the right polishes to create the color story that I was looking for with this mani was probably the hardest part - especially the red base. Initially, I was planning to go with a much more classic red, but since I knew that I wanted to add red full cover stamping I had to find the right pairing of polishes to create what I was looking for. I've found that on my nail length, when I want to use these types of single images it works really well to start with a full cover image to add some texture so that the main images don't look stark. In the end, I actually went with more of a blood red/burgudy sort of shade because I felt like it would work the best with that red stamping on top of it. 

For the demon images, I knew that I wanted to go with really neutral shades and I ended up choosing three different shades that all sort of live in the same family to do that fill. I grabbed a pale taupey beige, a slightly deeper ashy brown taupe, and finally a charcoal grey. I think color story is really important with this type of design and it's definitely something worth spending some time considering because it really can make or break the overall design. 

I started this mani by applying two coats of my base polish and letting those dry while I did the fill on my reverse stamping. I used a dotting tool and a really tiny nail art brush to do my fill and then let the images dry down on the stamper head. Once my base and decals were both dry, I applied first a cuticle barrier to all of my nails and then a sticky base coat to the nails that would be getting the decals, letting those dry down as well. Next, I went in with the full cover pentacle stamping in the red stamping polish. This image was actually too short for my nails, but I actually did find it really easy to pick up the appropriate parts of the image and add it to the tip of my nails to give that full cover look. Finally, working quickly, I added the demon images to the center of the nails while the sticky base coat was still sticky and use a finger to pat them down flat. 

Once I was happy with the design, I sealed it in with a nail art top coat to prevent smudging and then followed with a matte top coat to bring down the shine. The nail art top coat is extra important with a matte top coat, since they're definitely known to smudge nail art. And voila!

Honestly, I was really worried that this one wasn't going to turn out the way I had hoped, but in the end it was exactly what I had hoped it would be and it actually went really, really smoothly as well. Reverse stamping can be a little touch and go and I tend to talk myself out of doing it a lot of the time, but this one definitely went off without a hitch and I love it! Also... like, seriously, how cute are these little demons? So cute!

Be sure to head over to Cosmetic Proof and See The World In PINK today to check out their Halloween themed nails for our first #CBBxManiMonday of the month! Are you following me over on Instagram @pblnails? If you're not, be sure to head over there to check out video tutorials for all of my nail art designs and follow to stay up to date on this entire marathon of Halloween nail art designs every day in October.

Thanks for reading!