Last day of 12 Nails Of Halloween? Already!? How did we get here???

If you read this blog or know anything at all about my style and tendencies in nail art, you'll know that hand painting is not my forte and I'm forever painfully jealous of people who are good at it. That said, one thing that I've learned is that hand painting with gel polish is about a million times easier and more forgiving, so I decided to give a little try a mani that I've wanted to do for AGES. I was inspired by this mani from @NailsByCambria from a couple of years ago and I was actually planning straight up sticking to the blood drips... but I decided at sort of the last minute to try and up my game a little bit and put my own spin on it. 

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There are some mani's that I just always come back to, but I always try to change them up a enough that they feel a little bit fresh. One of my favorite mani's from my 2019 12 Nails Of Halloween was my Speckled Grunge Skull Nail Art, which was a really, really simple mani using one of my favorite polishes to reach for at this time of year, and I knew that I wanted to use that same stamping image in another mani this year. I actually considered just a straight up recreation, but ultimately I decided that I should probably change it up a little bit, so I took it to a bit of a darker place, but made it a little bit more fun with some holo and irridescent flakes that make it a bit of dark rainbow magic, if you ask me.  

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I can not believe that it's almost Halloween - we're in the last week, which makes this my last Halloween themed #CBBxManiMonday! This month has seriously flown by - and I can't believe I've only got a couple more Halloween mani's to share with you guys after this one! I am, however, really, really excited to share this one because it gives me serious heart eyes. This design is a classic at this point - graveyard and haunted house and spooky spooky silhouettes, but there are so many variations that it can take on and for this one... I went holo to the moon!

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Happy Friday, everyone! Can you believe we're already ¾ of the way through 12 Nails Of Halloween? I can't! The world is in a mess and my 2020 burnout is strong at this point, but time seems to be downright hurdling. Anyway, for today's mani, I feel like I somehow managed to keep it simple but also... like, a lot at the same time. 

Let's just proceed, shall we?

Sometimes you just have to go back to old favorites and this will be the third year in a row that I've done some variation of today's mani. I just can't help it - this mani is simple, straightforward and quick to do, but really packs a lot of punch when it comes to the overall look. Each year I do change it up, using different combinations of base and stamping colours to give it a different vibe each year. This is actually a mani I've also done on friends and family before and it never fails to excite. 

If you're looking for a super easy, no fuss stamping nail art for this Halloween, I definitely recommend trying this one out!

I have to admit, the inspiration for my 12 Nails Of Halloween was starting to run dry, but as soon as I picked up the Color Club Halo Jewels Collection it started flowing once again. Immediately I wanted to create gradients using these polishes because I just knew that they would pop beautifully. Even though I tend to try and change things up for all 12 manis, this collection was just screaming for a rainbow gradient and who am I to resist? I paired the gradient with some skull stamping - a favorite design for me at this time of year - and I'm super excited at how it turned out. 

So... For today's mani, I gave myself a bit of a challenge. I absolutely love Halloween nails, but I woudn't necessarily call any of the designs I tend to do at this time of year particularly "sophisticated", so I found myself sitting down and asking myself what would a sophisticated Halloween mani look like. Ultimately, I think this is a sort of subjective question, because I think the idea of sophistication would likely eliminate nail art entirely for some people while others would take a different view. Sophistication is, I think, generally a really subjective notion overall. Anyway, I think that this spiderweb mani with a modified french tip and a matte top coat is about as close as I can get to my idea of what "sophisticated" means. 

Keep reading to see how I did it!

 

Is it weird that I wake up with nail art ideas in my head? One mani I've always loved is bats over a gradient base. I tried it out last year with these Alternating Gradient Bat Nails and I sort of thought I would end up with something similar this year... but then at some point in the night my brain decided that what I actually needed was to go all Lisa Frank for this mani with a neon gradient rainbow... because I guess there aren't enough rainbow Halloween manis? Anyway, I'm kind of obsessed with how it turned out - takes me right back to my childhood collection of neon sticker magic - and super excited to share it for Day 4 of 12 Nails Of Halloween/#CBBxManiMonday!

Keep reading to read how I did it!

In my head I have a bit of a list - and by a bit of a list, I mean a pretty big list - of nail art designs that I've always wanted to try but either haven't had the chance or, more often, haven't had the right stamping plate. This year, I've kind of fallen in love with What's Up Nails Stamping Plates and I picked up a couple of Halloween ones that will definitely be showing up a lot in these twelve mani's I'll be posting over the course of October. One of the mani's that has been firmly on my list is one using the candy corn image from the What's Up Nails B023 Creepin' It Real plate and I've finally gotten around to it!

Keep reading to check it out!

I swear, I am so excited for Spooky Season this year and the nail art is flowing for this year's 12 Nails Of Halloween! I might be a broken record, but it's really true when I tell you that there are polishes that I generally only pull out at certain times of year - they just fit. Last year, I used two of the Color Club Matteified Metallics shades as the base for my Alternating Gradient Bats Nails and I knew that I wanted to pull them out again for this Halloween, but I wanted to find a way to use them differently. These polishes are actually available in store at Canadian Walmarts now, which makes me even more excited to share them because I know people can struggle to find some of the Color Club polishes I love to use here on the blog locally. I added one more polish from the collection to the mix for this mani and I love the result!

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IT'S FINALLY TIME - 12 NAILS OF HALLOWEEN and though I was very tempted to start last week, I wanted to save Day 1 for the first #CBBxManiMonday of October, which is going to be Halloween themed all month. (As is pretty much everything nail related here on the blog!) I am firmly of the opinion that Halloween nail art doesn't have to be dark and it can absolutely be cute, so I always try to do at least one mani at this time of year that uses a different colour palette than a lot of what we traditionally see - namely cute pastels. I actually pretty much had this mani mapped out in my head before I started, inspired by a couple of new-to-me stamping plates in my collection, but it did change a little bit once I sat down to actually do it and I love how it turned out.

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Hey, loves! For the last day of 12 Nails Of Halloween, I was a little torn on what I wanted to do, but I kept circling back around to this scary silhouette of a zombie/monster/witch face from the BeautyBigBang XL-091 Stamping Plate that I picked up this year. It wasn't an image that I actually thought I would use, but I was just so drawn to it that I felt like I needed to figure out a mani to use it in. I also really wanted my last mani to be a little bit dark and creepy, since it is Halloween after all, so I kept the colour palette dark (with some white for contrast) and kept the images distinctly grungy. 

Keep reading for a closer look and to see how I put it together!

Hey guys! I feel like the mani I put together for today's #12NailsOfHalloween is a bit of a classic these days, but I really couldn't resist giving it a go. I personally just love these sort of silhouette types of mani's and I feel like a blue almost-night sky is a great backdrop for it. I also feel like there's just so much that you can do with what's in the foreground to make every mani in this style your own, and I think I did that with mine. 

So, without further rambling by me, keep reading to see how I got these Smoky Blue Haunted House Nails!

When I was planning out my #12NailsOfHalloween this year, I knew that I wanted to do a really classic orange and black mani and I knew that I wanted to use Superchic Lacquer's Juicy as my base. If there's a more classically Halloween nail polish, I genuinely can't think of it, and I knew that it had to get some serious love this month. I actually tried a couple of different things out with this polish, but ultimately I really fell in love with how it worked in a gradient with black and I just went from there. 

Keep reading for a closer look and to see how I got this mani!

I have to say, I'm just so completely in love with all of the mani's I've put together for #12NailsOfHalloween, but today's mani has a bit of a special place for me. I don't know if anyone else feels this way, but there are a few polishes in my collection that I absolutely love but really only bring out for special occasions. Sometimes they're polishes that were limited edition or have been discontinued that I want to have around for as long as possible, and other times they're polishes that are just so specifically perfect for a certain time of year that I don't even think to use them any other time. The base for today's mani actually falls into both of those categories and I just love to bring it out every Halloween for some grungy nail art. 

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Hey guys! For today's #12NailsOfHalloween mani, I decided to try out something that... just isn't my forte. When I was looking for inspiration for all of my nail art for this month, I kept seeing these beautiful looks created by professional nail techs of these ghost face mask nails, and I loved them enough to force myself out of my comfort zone and do some hand painted nail art. Trust me, reaching for nail art brushes and doing freehand designs is definitely not my forte... but I think it turned out pretty well, which just underscores that pretty much anyone can recreate this design!

For a closer look and to see how I got this look, keep reading!

I have to admit that when it comes to Halloween nail art, I tend to be really, really drawn to the pairing of purple and green - if you haven't already noticed that from the nail art that I've already done. I think there's just something super bang on about that colour combination for this time of year, so for today's #12NailsOfHalloween mani, I went full stop with it and paired neon purple and green with some multichrome flakes and some grungy stamping. 

Keep reading to see how I got this look!

Something that I tend to forget when I get in my head and have ALL of the ideas that I want to throw at my nails is that sometimes keeping it simple can make for a real impactful mani. After trying out a few overly ambitious things that just weren't working, I found myself needing a little bit of a palette cleanser and this idea came to me like a bit of a lightbulb. I've never personally been much of a glitter gradient kind of girl (probably because I'm not much of a glitter kind of girl) but I've been all about flakies lately and I love them applied in a gradient and I felt like this could really work for a Halloween mani that isn't... quite so focused on graphics and more on just being pretty.