Artsy Wednesday - Halloween - Graveyard Nailart

Boo!

Yay for Halloween!  My absolute favourite celebration.  I love all this spookiness, and the fun that comes with it.  It's impossible to think of it without having a bit of a smile to yourself.  And so many nailart ideas to play with of course.  These days it's hard to come up with anything that hasn't been done before, and last year I stressed myself out trying to do so.  I did come up with my favourite nailart ever last year though, and will post a picture further down this post.  If you can't wait, the link is (here)

So anyway, as I was saying, this year I decided I'd pick a tutorial and give it a try.  I'm terrible when it comes to looking at other peoples stuff, and only usually look at things that pop up in my Twitter feed or YouTube subscriptions, so it was nice to make an effort to go out and see what everyone's got on their nails this season.

Alot of it was too cutesy for me, because as far as I'm concerned, it should at least be a bit spooky!  So I decided after looking at hours of tutorials, to give this VIDEO a try by Gorgeous Nails. 

And here's the result:

Now, typically for me, there are some elements of this that I'm not 100% happy with.  I wish I hadn't made the two crosses on the middle nails lean the same way, and I would have been a bit happier with the bat on my index finger if I'd worked on it a bit more.  However, the tree on my little finger is only there because I made a massive blob on my nail accidentally, and that came out alot better than I would have thought, so a good save there for me.

I did this look by painting all my fingers with OPI's My Boyfriend Scales Walls, then using black acrylic paint and my spotter brush to draw in the details.

Here's another pic:

In real life this actually looks pretty good, and I'm thinking some kind of gradient behind it might make it really special.  Very tempted to give it another go for the big day.  Everything of course was topped off with a coat of Seche.

I've booked November 1st off as a holiday from work this year (yay!) so I can have a drink, a bit of a one-girl celebration with a bottle of red wine and some spooky movies.  And lots of popcorn of course!  My favourite is Metcalfes Skinny Sweet & Salt (link) which seems to be relatively guilt free and oh so yummy.  Looking forward to it already!  Not sure which films to watch yet though.

Here's one last pic of this years halloween manicure, in close-up:

And, as promised, here's a pic of last years nailart, inspired by the Blair Witch Project:

Interestingly and co-incidentally, my nails look to be almost exactly the same shape and length as they were last year!  That's pretty weird considering they've been all sorts of lengths and shapes this year.  This is probably my favourite nailart ever.  Spooky-wooky. 

Anyway, make sure you mosey on over and check out the scaaarrrryyyyyy offerings from the rest of the crew:

Catrine at Unnaked Nails (link)
Michelle at Labmuffin (link)

Maria at Maria's Nail Polish Blog (link)

Melanie at Nail and Polish (link)
Emily at An Accent Nail (link)
Ameerah at Valiantly Varnished (link)
Anna & Haylee at Makeup and Masala (link)
Rosemarie at Every Little Polish (link)
Anna at Makeup N More (link)

I'd love to know what your favourite halloween nail look is! 

Until next time...

MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~

Snooker Loopy! Nail Art

Hi everyone!

I hope you are well today.  Its been snowing here today, thankfully it's stopped now.  I love looking at the snow, but I HATE driving in it.  Last year it snowed, then froze, then snowed again on top of that, it was flippin deadly.  My car broke (again) on Thursday night, the bonnet  (hood) catch broke and it wouldn't close properly.  Thankfully I managed to get booked in to the garage on Saturday morning and they mended it, but that was when I was going to blog so didn't get the chance.  I did manage to squeeze in a little bit of polish shopping though, so will do some swatches later this week :)

It's been a frustrating weekend for me nailart-wise though.  It seems that I've had some brilliant ideas, but making them work on my nails has been a torment.  Sometimes they've looked ok and I've smudged them before I've photographed them, or they haven't looked anywhere near as good as they did in my mind.  There's a design based on a photo that I'm dying to do, but I really want to do it justice, and what I've produced so far is.... well, you'll see.  When I do finally get the design I like, I'll put the fail in there too to show you.  Also I've been doing my Valentines experiments.  Have come up with a few maybes, again, will include them once I get the design I like.

Anyway, on to what I have managed to produce today.  The snooker has started this weekend, and I LOVE it!  You get to know the players, and that makes the psychological element of the game even more fascinating to watch.  My favourite player is Ronnie O'Sullivan, he's the bad boy of snooker, gotta love that.

So, as I was watching the snooker I thought to myself, why not do some snooker nail art?  So I did exactly that.  Unfortunately by the time I'd finished it was dark outside, so please excuse the indoors photos.  Maybe one Sunday when I'm at a loose end, I'll do this again and put some daytime pictures in here too:

Pretty sure I got all the colours of ball in there!  These are the colours I used:

Here they are, lined up on my mantel piece.
White: OPI Alpine Snow
Black: unnamed from Simple Pleasures Halloween Scented collection, review HERE
Pink: OPI Mod About You
Blue: Barry M Cyan Blue
Yellow: Rimmel Sunshine
Green: Barry M Spring Green
Brown: Nails Inc Ganton Street
Red: Rimmel Double Decker Red
For the background 'baize' base, I used a Color Club green which I believe to be Twiggie from their Poptastic Collection, but have thrown the packaging away so can't be 100% sure.  I wish so much that Color Club put the names on the bottles.

Anyway, I'm rambling again, here's another pic:

As you can see, I was a tiiiny bit impatient with my topcoat and slightly smudged a few red balls, but in real life you don't see that.  Nowhere to hide with these close ups!

And finally, here's the BBC Snooker theme tune, the video to it is so clever and creative.  I always get excited when this comes on!

So, are you a snooker lover or a snooker hater?  I admit nail art and snooker aren't usually talked about in the same breath, but I love both!

 

Also, one final, final thing...  I noticed I've passed 50 followers, this is a really big deal for me.  I'd like to thank you, each and every one, from the bottom of my heart, for sticking with me while I work out this weird and wonderful world of blogging.  It really means alot, and I hope to keep you all entertained for as long as you'll have me!  Thank you again XXX

 

Until next time...

 

MASPOOASE x x x

~Wendy~