I must admit that I've developed quite an affection for spooky tree nail designs for Halloween and over the years I feel like I've done several different versions of this design. In the past couple of months, I've seen tons of different spotlight style nail designs with a bright center and dark edges, so for this mani I decided to pair that vibe with an acid green base and some spooky tree stamping and I think it turned out really cool. 

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This is one of those manis that I actually tried twice, but the deep red base polish that I tried the first time thinking it would be vampy and cool mostly just ended up looking dark and losing the details. For my second try, I decided to go with this really bright acid green because it felt like it would pop really well against the black. This polish also has a jelly base packed with iridescent flakes, so you end up getting that pond effect, which I think also adds a cool depth to this design. 

To start, I applied two coats of my base polish and let those dry down completely.

Now for the actual design, I went back and forth on which order to do it in, but ultimately decided to start with the stamping and follow with the grunge stamping. I used the same tree image from the Pueen Halloween Party 01 Stamping Plate on all of my nails, just shifting the placement so that each of my nails looked a little different. Next, I went in with a small bit of makeup sponge that I ripped off what remained of an old gradient sponge and dipped that into my stamping polish as well before dabbing it around the perimeter of the nail to get that sort of grunge peekaboo look. This is DEFINITELY a moment where you're going to want to use a cuticle barrier to avoid a very, very messy clean up.

Once I was happy with my design, I sealed it in with a nail art top coat and then followed with a glossy top coat for shine and volume. And voila!

I'm definitely glad that I decided to give this mani a second try because the green definitely worked a lot better than the red and I think it even further amps up the creepy spooky vibe of it.