To celebrate, every manicure I do this month will be in honor of Halloween. I was going to post some of my manis from last month while I was MIA (just 'cause I didn't post 'em doesn't mean I didn't do 'em), but me excitement for the month is forcing me to post them out of order. I may post some back dated manis intermittently while I wear out the chosen Halloween mani, but I'll be deciding that on the fly in the future. I've got some really good one's too, like a camo one that was inspired by a camping trip my family and I took at the end of August, so stay tuned for that!
Now, on to...dat-da-da-dum! The first ever Digits Design Series: I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream For HALLOWEEN!
The first design for this series I call Scary Starry Night. Well, it's actually not scary at all but I liked the name anyway.
Here it is enlarged to make it a little easier to make out the design (and mistakes). A little blurred, but anyway.....
This is a different take on one of the experimental manicures I did months back that I knew I'd want to incorporate into a Halloween manicure. I used french manicure nail tip guides to (attempt to) keep my tip lines straight.
Since I promised to get better at this, here are the "tools" used:
L-R:
LA Colors "Base Coat/Top Coat" as a base
NYC Quick Dry in Black (doesn't have a sticker with a name on it)
Claire's Cosmetic "Galaxy" over the black
LA Colors "Art Deco" in white
and my FAVORITE, MIRACULOUS, MAGICAL, SUPER-DUPER (can you tell I love this stuff) top coat: "Seche Vite"
NOT INCLUDED: Tip guides and black nail art polish with fine brush for touch-ups and stamping stuff, 'cause I forgot.
I thought it would be so awesome if the stars and moon could glow, so the next day I hit my local Wal-Mart and found:
I was so excited! It's actually a set I found in the Halloween section that also came with a black crackle polish. Unfortunately my excitement caused me to trash the packaging before I got a picture of it (I'm so bad at that....you'll see).
So here's what it looks like with the glow in the dark polish added in regular lighting:
And here it is in the dark:
Okay, say it with me-WoooOOooOOOh!In real life, they actually glowed pretty bright with the right light source to activate them. Unfortunately the glow fades pretty quickly, so it was a race from fingers to the light to steadying the hand to snapping the picture. The result is the blurred, slightly faded pic you see above.
So here are some lessons I learned with this manicure:
-Tip guides (like tape) should be removed soon after polish is applied or else it sticks and will pull up with the guide when removed. I had read that somewhere before but had to learn the hard way. Consequently I had to touch up the lines.
-Takes a lot of glow-in-the-dark polish to make it glow really well, so the manicure will be slightly lumpy if only applying to part of the design (vs one even coat).
-Glow-in-the-dark polish needs to be held close to the light to glow really well.
-The light on my cell phone worked better than the lights in my house to get a brighter glow (?)
-Glow-in-the-dark polish doesn't glow for very long. That was a disappointment at first until I feared it would keep me up at night (I like my room pitch black to sleep well).
I liked this design a lot and think I'll have to revisit it again in a remastered version. I'm such a fan of black polish and black tips in general, so be prepared for lots of that this month. 'Tis the season!
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