Category Archives: Nail Art

Nail Art Tutorial: Haunted House Nails

Flash Haunted Mansion Halloween Nail Art Tutorial At first, this design may look like a Christmas tree next to an egg yolk or like a whole bunch of random dots. Haha!

They’re really supposed to be Haunted House Nails – see how the black house has all the lights on? The small yellow ‘light’ can be seen from the windows. And that big ol’ egg yolk? Imagine that it’s a moon in the sky.

In my other photos of it in different lighting, hope you’re able to humour me and see a haunted mansion at night. 🙂

I could see how you could tweak this design for Christmas. Instead of different-sized little dots, add multicoloured little dots for the string of lights.

To create this, I used a combination of nail stamping and freehand painting.

When I visited my mom on Sunday and showed her this, I asked her to guess what they were. “Dots!” She said. Hehe, okay, that’s technically correct. When I asked my boyfriend, he thought they were stylized Christmas trees. 😛

A man in his 50’s actually paused mid-sentence to tell me that he really liked my nails! (That was the first time an older man commented on my nails out of the blue…hehe, and on this Christmas-tree-and-egg-yolk design, too!)

There was also a little girl who kept staring at my nails on the subway. She was soooo cute! Every time I’d look at her, she’d look away and pretend that she wasn’t looking at my nails. Then, when I looked away, I could see her leaning forward to look at my fingers. Maybe she was trying to figure out what eggs had in common with trees. Or why someone had egged the tree. 😛
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Nail Art Tutorial: Spider & Web Nails

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Natural Light Spider & Cobweb Nails Nail Art Tutorial & Swatches smaller Oh, the tangled webs we weave…or paint! 😉

Here are some really simple Spider & Web Nails I did not long ago. It’s all freehand and doesn’t take long to do.

Looking back now, I wish that I had done more spiders and just one cobweb as the accent nail because I like the spider more than the web.

This Hallowe’en nail art reminds me of Charlotte’s Web. Do you remember that children’s book? It was one of my favourites, and I also enjoyed watching the movie. Oh, Wilbur was so cute, but I really fell in love with Charlotte.

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Nail Art Tutorial: Frankenstein’s Monster Nails

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Frankenstein Nail Art Tutorial Hallowe'en Nail Art Tutorial Frankenstein Monster Nails Today I am really excited to show you some more Hallowe’en nail art: Frankenstein’s Monster Nails!

I wore them for 4 days straight. Unfortunately, during that time, the sun only came out once, but I was busy and couldn’t take photos, so I only have flash and natural-light photos to show you. Hope you don’t mind!

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is my favourite novel of all time. I love the author’s way of writing in such a descriptive and flowery way – it helps me visualize everything like I’m watching a movie.

Back in 1818, people sure knew how to craft sentences and make them sound so poetic. And I admire how they flossed an impressive vocabulary!

If you haven’t read the original text, I highly recommend you do. It’s so much more than just the Hallowe’en character that a lot of people have identified it with.

The first time I read Frankenstein was in university for a humanities class. It was the biggest surprise. I thought it was going to be boring and cliche. It wasn’t! And I had trouble putting the book down. I literally read it in 2 days…on the bus, the subway, in my bed… (Sigh, I so need to re-read it.)

There’s deep philosophy and a myriad of allusions to other famous literature.

I really empathized with the monster more than with Frankenstein. The nameless monster was actually really intelligent and even taught himself how to read! He desperately wanted to be loved and to feel a sense of belonging, especially after he was harshly denied all ties to the only familial bond he knew. I could understand why he ended up lashing out.
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Nail Art Tutorial: Mummy Nails

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Mummy Nails Nail Art Tutorial & Swatches Today’s Hallowe’en nail art: Mummy Nails!

I decided to put a little spin on it. I tried to go the underground-graphic-novel route for my mummy nail art.

Classic mummy nails consist of more horizontal lines, but, as you can see, I changed it up by adding lots of thick diagonal and vertical lines. I felt like this gave it more of a wrapped and comic-sketched feel.

This is another design that’s super simple to do – you need 3 colours and it’s just freehand lines and dots.

Plus the cool thing about giving them red eyes is that if you accidentally smear them while putting on a top coat (like I did), it actually gives them that bloody-eye look, which is tres chic avec les momies, n’est pas? 😛

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Nail Art Tutorial: Witch Nails

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Witch Nails Nail Art Tutorial & Swatches I’m having a lot of fun doing Hallowe’en nail art, so I’ll keep going with it. 🙂

There’s nothing more classic than a witch on a broom flying across a moon, cackling as the menacing wind makes her cape flutter.

Since this is one of my favourite Hallowe’en scenes when I was a child, I decided to do Witch Nails this time!

(Turn your head to the right to see it better…hehe, or just look at my horizontal swatches of it later on in this post.)

Hope you like ’em. They’re really fast to do as long as you have the stamping plate. Even if you don’t, perhaps you could freehand some pointed witch hats on your nails and maybe put a broom on an accent nail.

Also, consider adding some glitter on the moon to highlight it and to give it that extra bit of magical twinkle!

I left it plain and classic. I encourage you to put your own creative touch on your nail canvas! Have fun! Continue reading →

Nail Art Tutorial: Skull Nails

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Skull Nails Nail Art Tutorial & Swatches The next Hallowe’en nail art: Skull Nails! They’re really easy and fast to do. Plus you’ll only need two colours, so hopefully more of you will decide to replicate this!

Yes, the teeth are super long, but you can tweak this design as you see fit. You could make your skulls smile, you could add some stitches, or you can go the lazy route like me and just draw vertical lines.

Even though it’s not perfect, I think that this is a fun design you can do in a snap.

Also, with just a few easy modifications, I can see how you could turn this into ghost nail art. (I’ll probably try this out later, too!)

P.S. Later on, I may try to do skull nail art that looks more menacing like The Punisher. We’ll see! Continue reading →

Nail Art Tutorial: Candy Corn Nails

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Halloween Candy Nail Art Tutorial & Swatch Hurray! It’s October! Why am I so excited? Hallowe’en is right around the corner, and it’s one of my favourite holidays in the entire year.

I’ve actually been prepping a few posts for this month to make sure that I get in some Hallowe’en nail art. And I still have plenty more ideas that I need to work on.

To start off the first festive nail art extravaganza, I bring you Candy Corn Nails! Who doesn’t love this yummy seasonal candy?

Funny thing: I’ve always been self-conscious about the shape of my ring-finger’s nail – it’s narrower at the top near the cuticle and then flares out. But, for candy corn nail art, the shape actually makes it look more like the candy! 😀 Woo hoo! Continue reading →

Swatch And Learn

Separating beauties from beasts