I almost resisted this year, but in the end there was just no ignoring the call of an all over bat mani. I just really couldn't seem to help myself. "It's frickin' bats - I love Halloween!" You know? Anyway, as always, I tried to change up the base for the design a bit and I ended up using two different bat images for this design, which ends up being pretty subtle overall but really does, I think, add a bit of visual interest. 

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I love a holo gradient, I must say, and the two polishes I used to create this one really have never let me down. Though pink and blue aren't necessarily the Halloweeniest of color choices, I feel like the bold jewel tones just really work. For this gradient, I decided to go with a vertical style gradient, alternating the placement to create the look of sort of waves of color, though I can't really be sure if it reads like that to other people.

To create this gradient, I started by applying a light purple holo base just to have something to build on top of. Once that was dry, I went in with my sponging. To get the alternating effect, I just alternated the direction of the sponge as I went across the nail, flipping it back and forth to alternate the placement of the colors. It took two passes of sponging to get to this level of opacity and blend, though I do think I probably could have done with a third pass just for more opacity and punch in the colors. 

For the bat stamping, I used two different plates from Whats Up Nails that both contain quite similar but still distinctly different bat images. For my middle two fingers and my thumb, I applied the full image in black stamping polish. For my pinkie and ring fingers, I applied one corner of the image angled in towards the middle of my hand to sort of bracket the design and give the impression that it's sort of dissolving, if that makes sense.

Once I was happy with my design, I sealed everything in with a nail art top coat and then finished with a generous layer of glossy top coat for shine and volume. And voila!

You really can't, in my opinion, go wrong with bat nails for Halloween. I feel like the base color or style really wouldn't matter at all as long as you have some nice black bats going on. That said - you can never go wrong with a good holo gradient, am I right?