Halloween Nail Art! Blood Splatter!

Gosh its been forever and a day since I have done nail art! Honestly I still love nail polish very much. I'm always looking at the newest colors and collections, but my love for nail art kind of fell out. I remember last doing nail art I believe for my birthday. Sadly between work and not being home much really squashed any time I had to sit to do nail art. It hurts my heart because its all I used to do back in the day! 

Did you know I haven't painted my nails in the last two weeks. I've been bare nail all this time. 

So the other night after seeing all the lovely Halloween nail art that all the other amazing Nail Bloggers were creating this season, it made me want get back into it. I decided on a blood splatter mani. I remember doing one I believe the first Halloween my little blog celebrated. It was Dexter inspired as well, white base with red blood splatter. I think even at that point I didn't know you could use a straw to get the splatter effect. 

This time around I wanted to make it more gruesome. I love horror movies and special effects makeup so it was only obvious. 

I started with a nude base color. I chose Cover Girl Forever Fawn which is fairly close to my skin tone. Without something on top of it, it definitely gives me mannequin hands! 

Once two coats of that was dry, I grabbed some plastic straws and cut them in half. Then I took Sinful Colors Ruby Ruby a nice blood red jelly and created a small puddle on a piece of paper. 

Now splatter manicures can be messy so I made sure that I had a few sheets of paper towels, or newspaper covering my work surface. I also had on hand some nail polish remover and Q-tips for clean up. You will get this all over your hands, especially if you miss your nail when doing the splatter part. 

Then I dipped one end of the straw into Ruby Ruby held it not super close over my nail but far enough away that it would create an awesome look. I then blew a short burst of air into the straw and prayed it hit my nail! 

Lets take a look at how I did! 

Here is my left hand. I absolutely love how this manicure turned out. It really looks like I messed up my nails in some sort of accident or that I brutally murdered someone! As you can see by my middle finger I was way too close to my nail when I blew into the straw and almost covered the whole nail. I think my index and pinkie fingers are my favorite because the splatter effects looks just right! 

Now here is my right hand. Trying to do any nail art with my non-dominant hand is insanely hard. I give major props to those who can do nail art on both hands and have it turn out amazing! The splatter effect is less but still looks pretty gruesome. 

And here we have an awkward thumb shot, out of both my thumbs my right one looked better and I was very happy with it. 

After the splatter was dry I used my all time favorite top coat Julie G Jet Set to seal everything in. 

If you liked this manicure, let me know in the comments below and also tell me what your favorite thing about Halloween is! Was it a costume? All the scary shows on TV? Let me know! 

I'll talk to you all tomorrow! <3 Nicole 

Ghostly Nails

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

Hope you all are having a safe and awesome Halloween!

So as you know the east coast got devastated by Hurricane Sandy, up here in the Hudson Valley we were spared, not a lot of rain but it was pretty windy. My dad however who is on Long Island where my grandfather is was in the brunt of the storm. As of Monday night he had texted to say he was without power and would call us in the morning. Sadly there is very limited cell service right now as it went out with the power, we have had a few calls from him since then and he is fine. It worries me because he is my dad and I miss him. He has no way to get home right now since the train service is suspended until the fix everything which could take some time, and he maybe without power for 7-10 days. I know he wants to come home soon so I'm praying that the train service gets restored soon and he can come home.

Anyway on to today's post! Ghosties for Halloween!

If you have a last minute party to go to and have no idea what to do with your nails here is a quick little idea.

First off you want to paint your nails with a black polish.After you base coat your nails of course!  I used a little mini black polish from L.A. Girls. Let that dry completely!

Then with your dotting tool and a white polish make your ghosties! Let them dry. Then if you want as an optional step, you can go over the white polish with a glow in the dark polish and then let that dry as well.

Finally dot on black eyes and a mouth and once your design is completely dry, seal it in with your favorite top coat!

So here are my ghouls! And the last photo  is of them in the dark! I love how they glow! I was so surprised that my camera actually picked it up and I didn't need a special light or something!

Okay so I hope you enjoyed that! Can't wait until December to do Christmas Nail art! Hope you all have a safe and Happy Halloween!

<3 Nicole

Halloween Nail Art:

So its one day until Halloween and I am here to bring you another nail art that is simple enough to do if you have any last minute costumes to do or a party to go to. Bear in mind I hope that you all are safe here on the east coast from Hurricane Sandy and her awful wrath. If you are going out for Halloween tomorrow night or tonight for a party just be safe!

So toady's nail art is sort of, well I thought it was gory, my mother described it as 'cute'. She is always the first one to see what I paint on my nails, whenever I sit at the kitchen table she always says, "painting them again?" and I go "yup".

So when thinking of what I wanted to do, I first thought that I would recreate another awesome nail tutorial by Goldiestarling, she has these awesome little vampire nails on her YouTube page and they are as easy as the Frankenstein ones. So I went to work recreating them and wound up hating them! They looked horrid to me, so I took them off and tried something different, pumpkin nails... and yet another fail! So now going on the third try, its gotta be a charm right? I decided to on blood drip nails. I know they have been done before, but I have never done them.

All you are going to need for this nail art is a blood red polish, if you have a vampy jelly polish even better.

The first polish that popped in my head was my new Cover Girl Polish, its red and vampy and jelly! I would of used Velvet Bow from China Glaze but I love that polish too much to use it for nail art!

Taking a small dollop of it on some news paper and my large end of my dotting tool I went to work, I first covered my visible nail line kind of like a messy french manicure. Second I dipped the large end of the dotting tool in the polish and starting from the middle of my nail I placed a drop and dragged it back to my tip of my nail. Do this two, three, or four times (if your nail bed is big enough) and at varying lengths.

You can see that I wasn't very good with the "varying lengths" part, mine are uniform except my pinkie finger. I think this would be great if you are going to be a zombie, it looks like you just dug in to some flesh!

Just top it off with a top coat and you should be good to go for the night! Until next time! <3 Nicole

Cover Girl Stay Brillant Nail Gloss in Wine Stain.

Hello! As I type this we have a hurricane-a-brewin' outside. Hurricane Sandy is bearing down on us here in Northeast. Last year on this very day we had a freak snow storm, so I'm pretty sure the apocalypse is happening....haha just kidding....maybe. Next it will be zombies or something....

Anyway I haven't forgotten that Halloween is in three days and today I have a very simple nail polish for you that would go great if you are going to be a witch or a vampire or you just don't like nail art and just want a color that says vampy but still somewhat work appropriate.

I know a polish is work appropriate for me when no one notices it at work. So this polish is by Cover Girl! I have never seen Cover Girl Nail Polish before, but I should refer to it as they call it Nail Gloss. I had heard they would be releasing a line of polishes and I was excited to see what they would produce. While at Walmart preparing for this lovely hurricane we had to go past the beauty section to pet supplies and low and behold there on an end cap was the new collection. I was immediately drawn in to the display due to the bottles. They look like Chanel Nail Polish bottles. Tiny little square bottles. Then the excitement dropped as I didn't particularly like the color choices. they had some nice what I call ' mom' colors or colors my mother would wear. I then picked up a vibrant purple color that was the brightest in the display and decided to get that and then I saw the one I am about to show you today.

I love a good vampy red color, it looks the best on my skin tone, so when I grabbed for Wine Stain, (the name of this perdy color) I definitely saw Halloween, and also it made me think of all the 'Oxblood' polishes that I have seen some people get excited about.

So now two new Cover Girl Nail Glosses were making there way home with me, the only other downside was the size of the polish and price, you  get 10ml of polish for $4.97. That's kind of steep even for Walmart. I would expect that price at CVS or Walgreen's, even Rite Aid. The Maybeline Color Show Polishes which are the same size only go for $2.97 at my Walmart the last time I looked. So its up to you as the consumer and nail polish addicts to decided on whether five bucks a pop is worth it to you.

Here are my swatches of Wine Stain. I like this polish a lot, two coats is good for opacity, and clean up is not such a bitch as it usually is with dark red polishes. The finish is very glossy and shiny, and it kind of has that jelly-esq finish to it.

I'm still wearing this polish as I write this and after a long night at work I only have two small chips on my right hand on my thumb and pointer fingers. So...so far so good I guess, and let me remind you what I do for a living. I work in customer service lifting heavy objects and register tills and constantly digging my hand into till to pick up change and money to count, then there is the dreaded self-check out which are metal bins that I have actually sheared my pinkie nail off of before. In conclusion only having two small chips is pretty good :) The only bad thing with the bottle is the top, trying to hold that square top and paint your nails gets bulky and almost blocks my vision to my nail so I have to crane my head to see I get it on the nail and not on the finger.

Okay so that's it for this post. Stay tuned for tomorrow's post to see how I used this polish in nail art!

Talk to you soon
<3 Nicole

Frankenstien Nails!

Happy Sunday!

Hello guys! Today I bring you another nail art post for the Halloween!

This post is inspired by yet another amazing beauty guru who does amazing YouTube videos. Every year I look forward to her Halloween tutorials. Not that I could ever recreate the perfection she does, but she does have some nail art tutorials that are super easy and fun to recreate!

Back in 2010 Youtuber GoldieStarling put out a tutorial on Frankenstein nails, this tutorial in particular made me want to do more nail art. Now at the time I didn't have a blog in 2010 but I still practiced it and attempted this tutorial and it was a big hit amongst my co-workers and friends. So in thinking of what to do for some Halloween post I thought I would re-do these amazing nails and show them to you.  Below is Goldiestarlings original video on how to do these amazing nails!

For my Frankie nails I used Orly Green Apple for his skin, my Sinful Colors Black Striper to create his hair, mouth and eyes and eye brows, and Pure Ice Superstar to make the whites of his eyes.

Here are my pictures of my Frankie Nails!

I think they came out pretty good! They are super simple, I think it took me about a half hour to do these nails and then about 10 mins to dry!

I hope you try out Goldiestarling's designs!
Until next time <3 Nicole

China Glaze Immortal vs. Claw Polish Phantom

Good Morning!

Hope you all are well! For those of us here in the Northeast we are currently watching and waiting on Hurricane Sandy. She is supposed to hit some where near New Jersey late Monday night and bring lots of rain and wind :( This would be my second hurricane, the first one being Hurricane Irene, (really she was a tropical storm) but it certainly caused a huge mess. I'm hoping Sandy doesn't do that much damage this time, since most places are just getting back on their feet over a year later.

Anywho on to today's post! I hinted a few post back that I had another dupe post for you, and if you read the title then you know exactly what I am talking about! This year China Glaze put out this amazing grey creme polish that has the slightest shimmer of blue and silver and a hint of magenta. When I first saw bottle shots and early swatches I thought that it could be close to a polish I got last Halloween.

So when I saw it in person at Sally's I knew it most likely was a dupe but I had to have it anyway!

So today I bring CG Immortal vs. Claw Polish Phantom.

Lets talk about the Claw Polish. I only bought this polish because I had seen swatches of it on my all time favorite beauty blog Nouveau Cheap! I thought it looked unique and I did not have any grey polishes at the time, when I saw it in CVS I thought okay its pretty but it might be sheer. It is a buildable sheer polish. The shimmer in it is significantly silver/grey but you occasionally see a small speck of blue or magenta  After wearing it for a short time last year I included it in my top 11 polishes of 2011.

The formula on these two polishes is different but not in a way that will shock you. Immortal is a tad thicker than Phantom and only needs two coats to be opaque, where as Phantom looks best at three. Both polishes after four coats are this very dark graphite grey which to me wasn't very appealing. In my photos below are three coats and one coat of top coat.

So to compare, China Glaze Immortal is on my pinkie and middle finger and Phantom is on my ring and pointer finger. These two polishes are dead on dupes for each other, the only difference being the formula. I would say that if you didn't have access to the Claw Polishes from last year, although I hear they are out at Kmart this year then the China Glaze polish is a good pick.

I hope you enjoyed my dupe post! And thanks for taking the time out to read it!
Until next time <3 Nicole

China Glaze Wicked Collection: Bizzare Blurple.

Good Morning!

Today I have to show you all  another polish from China Glaze's Wicked Collection! Bizzare Blurple is the name of the polish, and I have to say that the name suits it well! I have never seen a polish like this before.

It is a lovely shimmery puprle based polish packed full with blue shimmer! This polish is perfect in two coats. The formula is amazing, its not runny or to gloopy, I could get a good one coat and not have to dip my brush back in to get more polish!  Its got this glowy effect to it which I love! If I was going to dress up as a witch for Hallween I would wear this polish for my nails! Thats exactly what I think when I look at this polish!

Clean up was a little difficult like any dark polish I did have a bit of residue around my cuticles.

Sadly my camera didn't want to pick up any of the purple in this polish! Not even my Iphone would pick it up and usually it does such a good job if my digital camera miss something!

I absolutley love this polish and I do plan on wearing this polish at points all year round! If you want to find any of the China Glaze Wicked Polishes, you can purchase them from the usual online e-tailers, Sally Beauty which is where I picked up mine!

Okay so I hope you enjoyed this post!
Unitl Next time! <3 Nicole

China Glaze Wicked Collection: Roguish Red

Good Morning! Today I have a nail polish from China Glaze's 2012 Halloween Collection called the Wicked Collection.


Now I picked up the four pack and one single polish from this collection, from Sally's. The four pack had Roguish Red, which is what you will see today, Bizarre Blurple, Glitter Goblin, and Ghoulish Glow. The Single Polish I picked up is Immortal.

Roguish Red was a polish I didn't expect to like at all. Red polishes and I don't usually get along unless they are some what vampy. The bright orange-y reds don't usually mesh with my skin tone so I tend to stay away from them, however this one actually looks okay.

Roguish Red is a bright orange-red creme polish that definitely needs two coats so your visible nail line doesn't show. The first time I used this color was with a failed gradient attempt and the tips of my nails looked like I had dug into flesh. I think some nice black polish stamping would look really good over this color.

Drying time is good, I noticed it didn't take long to dry in between coats and before even adding a top coat the polish is glossy!

                                         All three pictures were taken in natural sunlight!

These pictures were taken with my IPhone, my digital camera wanted to make my fingers glow.:(
Okay so I hope you enjoyed this quick look at Roguish Red. If you think your skin tone can handle this bright polish then by all means go out there and get it!

Talk to you soon
<3 Nicole