As soon as I saw this year's Uberchic Halloween plate - 09, if you're wondering! - I wanted to put together some version of today's mani. I love that they included both a full cover image featuring the vampire teeth as well as the single image. I absolutely love when plates do that because it really allows for a cohesive design without having to try and isolate a single image from the full cover image or just fully cover all of your nails. For me, versatility with plates is really important, so this is huge for me.

Keep reading for more!

For me, the color story for this mani really sort of felt unavoidable - less about what I wanted it to be and more about what it should be. That being said, choosing a base polish for this mani was actually quite a process and I think I pulled out at least a dozen different options before settling on this very cool toned charcoal grey shade from Essie called Carols & Caviar.

I started by applying two coats of Carols & Caviar to my first, middle and ring fingers. Next, I applied two coats of Color Club's Hot Stuff to my pinkie and thumb to sort of bracket the design with the red of the lips. 

For the stamping, I picked up the full cover image and the single image on regular stampers and then I also picked up the single image on a shrinking stamper so that I could use the smaller version for my pointer finger. I alternated between a dotting tool and a nail art brush to fill in the images with red for the lips, white for the teeth, and a very neutral nude pink for the tongue. Once the images were dry to the touch and ready to be transferred, I applied a thin layer of sticky base coat and let that dry down for about a minute. Once the base coat was tacky, I transferred the images to the nail directly from the stamper head.

Once I was happy with the design, I sealed everything in with a nail art top coat and then finished with a matte top coat to smooth everything out and bring down the shine. And voila!

I'm currently having a bit of matte top coat struggle, I must admit, but I'm still so thrilled with how this mani turned out. In all honesty, I actually kept putting this one off because I tend to convince myself that reverse stamping isn't going to go well, but this one came together really smoothly and looks pretty much exactly how I intended it to. Love!