Halloween 2013 - Spooky Silhouettes

I wanted to do something kind of cool for Halloween this year, because I pretty much flaked on Halloween last year.  I was coming up short on ideas though, so I did a simple Google Images search on "Halloween" to see if I could get inspired.  A bunch of the results were wallpapers or clip art with some type of silhouettes in front of a roundish, full moon looking orange glow.  I decided to try and translate that look to my nails and here's what I came up with!

I started with a coat of China Glaze Lemon Fizz as a base.  Then I sponged on Lemon Fizz and China Glaze Sun Worshipper to create a gradient, and applied some top coat to smooth it out.

Before stamping, I also applied one coat of China Glaze Ghoulish Glow.  I've had it for so long and I kept forgetting to use it every Halloween.  This seemed like a perfect design to finally wear it.  For the stamping, I used designs from the following plates:

Thumb - jack o'lanterns from Bundle Monster BM-H06
Index - black cat from Bundle Monster BM-H08
Middle - bats from Winstonia W116
Ring - tombstone from Bundle Monster BM-H08
Pinkie - spooky church from Bundle Monster BM-305

My thumb is a nub again by the way.  Broken off in its prime.  But I wasn't in the mood to cut down all my other nails just because my thumb decided not to cooperate with the rest of my hand.

All of the designs were stamped using Konad Special Polish in black.  Then I cut a narrow strip off of a makeup wedge and used it to sponge on Sinful Colors Black Expressionism around the designs.  I was a bit on the fence about the final look until I added top coat.  The top coat really made it come to life.  It turned out almost exactly how I had originally imagined it in my mind.

And after some trial and error with my camera, I even managed to get a semi-decent picture of it glowing in the dark!

Definitely one of my favorite Halloween designs that I've ever done.  And not as hard to do as it might look.  Which is a good thing since my mom decided she wanted me to repeat it on her nails a few nights later, lol.  Happy Halloween!!!

KBShimmer Swatch Spam

Press Sample

Along with the new KBShimmer polishes I was sent to review back in August, I also received several mini bottles of core collection colors.  I've had these swatched since August but just never got around to posting them.  Bad Sarah!  However, if you follow KBShimmer on Facebook, then you may have seen the new Trick or Treat promotion that Christy is running.  If you happened to have missed the announcement, check out the details here.  With the new promotion running, this seems like a great time to finally get these swatches up!  

Be prepared, this is going to be a bit picture heavy.  Check out all the swatches after the break.

Zoya Saran Wrap Nails

Welp, looks like I've got some catching up to do.  Lots of manicures have come and gone since my last post.  My nails grew out, then a few broke so they were down to nubs, and then they grew out again, lol.  I'm going to try, more or less, to go in order with these.  Here's one manicure I wore back in the beginning of August, using Zoya Charisma and Zoya Rocky.  I actually wore this the week right before the KBShimmer swatches in my previous two posts.  This was my first ever attempt at saran wrap nails.

I started out with 2 coats of Zoya Charisma, which is a neon magenta/purple shade.  Application was really smooth and Charisma dried to a matte finish.  Once that was completely dry, I followed with the typical saran wrap nail steps using Zoya Rocky, a wonderful dusty light blue.

Working one nail at a time, I applied a thick coat of Rocky and then took a small piece of plastic wrap balled up and dabbed it randomly on the nail, slowly revealing bits of Charisma underneath.

I think it went pretty smoothly, being my first time trying this technique.  There were a few times that I thought I took too much polish off, but I just applied a fresh coat of Rocky and dabbed again with a new piece of plastic wrap.  After waiting for everything to dry, I applied top coat.

I was really happy with the final look.  Charisma and Rocky worked really well together.  I think this is a fairly easy technique to do and would work well on those days when you just aren't sure what type of manicure you're in the mood to do.