HALLOWEEN NAIL ART: Adorably Spooky Graveyard Nails

by - October 24, 2022


Graveyard nails have definitely become a bit of a Halloween staple, but it can be hard to think of new and fresh takes on how to do them. Granted, I still absolutely love the traditional night sky gradient with black graveyard silhouette stamping and I think it's become a bit of a classic for a reason, but I also find myself wanting to find new ways to do this style of nail art. Enter the Manitude x Too Cute To Spook Stamping Plate, which has a perfect selection of images to put together a very cutely creepy graveyard nail design!

Keep reading for more!


When it came to the color story for this mani, I went in knowing that I wanted to keep the reverse stamping fill monochromatic, so I was left to decide whether I wanted to go monochrome for the whole look or lean into color for the background. Ultimately, I decided to bring some brightness but also stick with a sort of... spooky color vibe, so I went with shades of quite cool toned purple. I went with a four shade gradient, starting out very, very light and moving to a quite dark but not quite blackened purple and it ended up taking three passes of sponging to get to the desired opacity and blend, and then I decided that I wanted to add a little bit of texture and twinkle, so I went in with one coat of an iridescent blue flakie topper, which I think worked just right with this design.


For the stamping, I decided that I wanted to do a combination of some sort of randomly placed, sort of askew headstones along with various other spooky images in the sky. From the start I knew I wanted to use that adorable little reaper image that ended up on my ring finger and I ended up sort of building from there with a ghost, a bat, and some clouds and moon just for a little extra. I actually went nail by nail on this mani, which was a little bit time consuming and made me feel like I need to start collecting a few more stampers, but I got it done. Essentially I filled in all of the images I wanted to use on each nail at the same time, let them dry down on the stamper head, and when they were ready to transfer I applied a thin layer of sticky base coat to the nail to grip it and then transferred the images. For the gravestones, I placed them a short distance from the tip of the nail and then went in with a black polish at the tip to give the appearance of ground.

Once I was happy with the design overall, I sealed everything in with a nail art top coat and then once that was dry followed with a matte top coat (that did not perform as smoothly as I might have hoped) to take down the shine. And voila!


All Products Used
Sally Hansen - Crying Out Cloud*
Sally Hansen - Grease Lightning
Color Club - Pucci-Licious
Color Club - Island Vibes
Color Club - Born Wicked
Starrily - Patronus**
Whats Up Nails - Neither Noir
Dimension Nails - Vegan Gains**
Dimension Nails - Black Rhino**
Orly Bonder Base Coat
Maniology Smudge Free Top Coat
Cuticula Cloud Cover Matte Top Coat
Manitude x Too Cute To Spook Stamping Plate
Whats Up Nails Magnified Clear Stamper & Scraper
Pueen Chunky Transparent Soft Stamper
Pueen Latex Tape Liquid Peel Off Cuticle Guard
NailStuff.ca Dotting Tool**
NailStuff.ca 4mm Nail Art Brush**

* = PR Sample | ** = Affiliate PR NailStuff.ca ~ use code TRYSH for 10% off first order.


I have to admit, I'm coming away from this mani of two minds. The first is that I'm completely obsessed with how the design came together. And the second is that I am SO ANNOYED that the matte top coat left streaks of texture in the finish - I suspect I'll be retiring that one and only using ones that I know aren't going to mess up my final product. Still, it's subtle and I'm mostly just being an insane perfectionist - but it had to be said. Grr! But also yay!

Have you followed me over at @pblnails on Instagram yet? Head over there to check out video tutorials for all of the nail art I post here on the blog and follow me to keep up on all of my nail designs - including new Halloween themed nails every day in October!

Thanks for reading!


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