It's the start of another week after a long weekend, and because I wasn't able to do a Halloween-themed nail art a week before the actual Halloween day, my nail art post will concentrate on that.
It was October last year when I started really liking nail polish. While vacationing in La Union in time for Undas (All Saints / All Souls Day), I spent my extra time reading a book or checking each and every nail polish blog I could find. Halloween is one celebration a lot of nail bloggers prepare for when it comes to nail art, and the Blood Splattered Nails was one of those easy nail art designs I hoped to try.
I wanted to try it since then - even bought myself a bottle of white and red nail polish, but small pharmacies and convenience stores in La Union only had the Caronia Nail Polish brand, and the very open space of our house, with wind coming in the big windows proved to be the biggest hurdle for creating the said nail art. This local brand tends to go thick and goopy easily, that I couldn't bring myself to do the first step. I gave up and told myself I would try come following year.
...and this year, I didn't forget to do the promise I told myself.
How to make this nail art?
Basic things to have would be white nail polish, red nail polish, and a drinking straw. You can go with your choice of nail polish, but for the red one, I suggest you go with something with a deeper color, to make it look a little real. As for the drinking straw, I used the ordinary one that comes with the cup of soda at any fast food chains, but my sister thought it would be better to use the straw that comes with a juice box because it was smaller.
Other things you might need - tape (either masking tape or Scotch tape) to wrap around your fingers for easy cleaning, a small paintbrush (to clean around your nails and cuticles), nail polish remover, paper (to cover your table as this nail art would be messy to do), nail polish thinner (just in case your red nail polish is thicker than how you want it to be), and a bottle of your choice of topcoat to protect your nail art design. This last item is optional, and I will tell why as you read this post.
Let's get started:
1) Paint the nails white. I used two thick coats of Sweet Cherry Nail Polish in Snow White as my base color and allowed it to dry completely before proceeding to the next step.
2) If you're concerned about making a mess on your skin and you don't want to spend a lot of cleaning time, wrap your finger tips with tape. Cut two pieces of tape - one short and one longer. The short one lay under your cuticles, and wrap the longer one around your fingertips. Wrap all your fingers before going to the next step. You can skip this step if you want to... I personally didn't do this (as what you can see on the first image of this post.
3) Lay a paper on top of your table and cut your drinking straw into three. No special reason why... I just thought it would be better if you use just enough length of the straw. Pour an amount of red nail polish (I used Tony Moly Nail Polish in RE01) on the paper and dab the end of the straw in it.
4) Get as much of red nail polish as possible, making sure some would go inside the straw. Then, put the other end of the straw in your mouth and blow air so that the nail polish would splatter on your nail. Repeat the process and work on one nail at a time until you achieve the look you wanted. You might need to do the step two to three times per nail, but please allow a good distance between your nail and the straw. If the distance is too far the splatter would be small (and the paper would get all the design) and if you aim too close, one blow might cover your entire nail.
Just wanna say, if you use a red nail polish that is not newly bought, it might be a little too thick, giving you a difficulty in blowing out the accumulated lacquer at the end of the straw. This happened to me, so what I did was to drop a few nail polish thinner into the bottle of my red nail polish, and instead of pour little amounts on the paper, I dipped the straw in the bottle and went from there. Nail polish thinner is not really needed, but it would be helpful to have one on stand by just in case.
5) Take out the tapes (if you used this material) while the nail polish was still a little wet. In the few times I used tape as a material for nail art, I learned that it is best to take out the tape while the design is still wet because if I allow it to dry, the pull would create an unwanted look. Even with using the tape, it would still leave nail polish marks on your skin, so to clean up, pour an amount of nail polish remover into a small container, dip your brush, and erase away. The clean up stage, I usually do after I am done with all my nails, allowing the design to dry for a few minutes first so that I won't damage it by accidentally mishandling my brush. If you don't have a brush, you can also use cotton swabs, or you can use a toothpick wrapped with cotton.
6) Red nail polish tends to bleed when you use certain top coats. If your top coat drags out red nail polish, it is best not to top coat it anymore, but if it doesn't, go ahead and cover your design with a top coat.
This is how my nails looked like. If you notice, I didn't show an image of my left fingernails. That's because the red nail polish I used was so fragile that even if I dried it the entire day, my design was still damaged when I put on a top coat. Well, even without the top coat, my nail art stayed beautiful for a few days. I made this nail art on Halloween afternoon, and took it out last night, because I am going to change my pedicure. I guess I used a good white base coat because there were no chips whatsoever, even if I did a lot of house chores (including scrubbing the pots and the laundry).
This is such an easy nail art that I am sure you can do, too. It looked good in red because it simulated blood splats, but of course you can also do this nail art with any color combination you want. Also, to give a little depth, you can go for two kinds of red nail polish - one that is very deep (bordering brown) and one that is slightly lighter, to simulate the contrast between dried and fresh blood.
Now that Halloween's over... I am now on a lookout for easy Christmas nail art designs.
* Jenn *
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