As nail artists, I feel like we're always taking at least some inspiration from other nail artists, but there are a handful of mani's that I've personally done that I'm really, really proud of that were very much from my own brain. Last Christmas I put together this mani on a bit of a whim and it pretty much immediately became one of my favorite mani's I've ever done, so of course, I wanted to use very much the same template for a Halloween themed mani and, of course, I'm in love with it.

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In the original mani, I used OPI's Robots Are Forever as my base, but for this mani I ended up using the pond mani technique that I devised to make up for the fact that I can't get my hands on a backup bottle of that baby. Basically this technique is a traditional pond mani using a flakie topper sandwiched between coats of a sheer milky base. In this case, I started with a sheer white polish with a subtle shimmer running through it, followed by an iridescent flakie topper that basically covers the entire rainbow, and then finished with one more coat of the milky base. As you can see in the macro shot below, this technique gives a really cool sort of see through, textured base that has really subtle interest to it. 

Next, I went in with a makeup sponge to add my tip. When I don't want to do a full coverage gradient, which is usually when the base polish and the tip polish just won't give me the kind of gradient I'm looking for, I like to use a technique when I sponge on the tip color along with a clear polish to get a smooth blended gradient look. For this particular mani, I did three passes of a black linear holo for the tip to get the intensity and blend that I was looking for. 

Honestly, this is some of the easiest stamping that I could possibly do, but somehow it packs a lot of punch and interest, I think. Basically, I chose a small standalone spiderweb image that was the right size for the space I was putting it and applied it in black and white, layered over each other at the center of the nail. I alternated the placement of each color as well as the order that I applied them so that there's almost a feel of the images transitioning into the next nail, if that makes sense.

Once I was happy with my stamping, I went in with a water based top coat to seal in the design and then followed with a quick dry glossy top coat for shine and volume. And voila!

Who knew that the exact same design could work quite so well for two so very different holidays? And by two I mean three because just this very second I remembered that I also did a version of this for Valentine's Day this year as well. Oopsie! Apparently this is my thing now.

Anyway, be sure to check back here every day for the entire month of October for more Halloween themed nails. I may have bitten off more than I can chew with this project but... what can you do? Also, if you're not already following me over at @pblnails, be sure to head over there and check out video tutorials for pretty much all of the nail art I post here on the blog!

Thanks for reading!