Happy Halloween everyone, and I hope you enjoyed Inktober! I had a blast doing it this year...probably the best year so far! I'm so happy to have shared it with you all, and I hope you like the last entry of this year with these creepy cute little crawling spiders.
The base color is Sandy from Zoya, and everything is hand painted as usual!
I watched a good horror movie last night, called Cadaver. I won't give it away, but there were definitely eyes where they shouldn't have been in the film. That gave me the perfect inspiration for today's "ominous" prompt. Watch where you step!
The floor boards were done with two Zoya colors: Louise and Noah. Then the eyeballs were done with White Porcelain and Black Hole (INM), as well as Shore Enuff and Sun Upon My Skin (China Glaze) and Hannah (Zoya).
Home stretch for Inktober 2020! Today's prompt is "shoes", and rather than do the typical converse nail art, I gave it a little spooky spin.
The green base is Secret Garden Posh (lakur), and the orange is Sunset Blvd (American Apparel). Black Hole and White Porcelain (INM) provided the rest of the look, plus little silver rivets of Push and Shove (OPI).
It was pretty obvious with it being spooky season, and with a prompt like "float", that I was going to do an homage to "It"...the origin story for all creepy clowns.
The colors I used were Licorice (essie), White Porcelain (INM), and Having a Big Head Day and It's a Piazza Cake (both from OPI).
I also apologize for the late post. I was fully engulfed in a new (to me) docuseries called "The Vow,"
Is anyone else missing live music as much as me? COVID has just killed that this year, and I really hope it changes soon. But in the meantime, this is as close as my nails get to music right now.
On a base of Licorice (essie), I painted each letter in Sharktooth (Jessica Cosmetics), then outlined them in neon polishes including Chatty Catty and Skater Dater (Sation), Funky Yellow (Kleancolor), and Neon Heat (ORLY). Then I painted over the neon again with white. It's actually really simple and really effective if I do say so myself. I also added some neon glitter on my thumb with Phoenix (Pretty & Polished) and Frankenstein Spit (jindie nails).
Who else misses live music?
If anyone has a cat, you're familiar with their antics. One of the cutest is when they're "hidden" but their tail or ears are poking out, but you pretend they're actually hidden, just like when a child plays hide and seek. So sebrodrick's Ghost Cat Collection was the perfect inspiration for today's prompt.
The background yellow is The "It" Color from OPI...one of my personal favorites.
There's one "buddy" that comes to mind for most people, especially if you're in Colorado right now and the snow is falling. Here's the infamous Buddy the Elf for day 25 of Inktober!
This little Christmas-in-October look with Buddy the Elf wasn't difficult to create, but it did require a few polishes:
There's not much explanation needed for the look I put together for "dig". So here are my little digger ants!
This was an interesting look to put together. First, I put down a layer of a textured Sally Hansen polish called Sugar Fix. Then, I painted one layer of Misty (Zoya) on top. The tunnel colors are also from Zoya - Chanelle with an outline of Emilia. I also used Emilia to add rocks in the sand. The ants were done with Courtney, another Zoya shade. Then, I used a matte top coat over the tunnels, and left the sand and rocks top-coat-less to maintain the texture effect.
Here's some ripped jeans and a tutorial to go with them for day 23 of Inktober 2020. This was fun and EASY to do, so go try it yourself!
Click here to watch the tutorial on Instagram!
I had an idea to do riff on the "holy trinity" of Italian cooking (celery, carrot, and onion), so when I hopped online to find pictures of onions, I stumbled upon this ADORABLE design of vegetables from Zhe Vasylieva and knew they belonged on my nails.
There were a lot of colors needed for these little veggies:
Today's prompt is "sleep", so I wanted to just do a bunch of Z's. I thought it'd be cool to do them in different font styles too.
I looked up what the "colors of sleep" were, and the first, unresearched result I found said cool, dark colors like green and blue, so I used two OPI colors to meet that requirement: Amazon...Amazoff and Road House Blues.
Thanks for your patience about yesterday. I was so wiped out at the end of the day I just couldn't muster the willpower to stay awake and do a thoughtful design. But when I checked what day 20's prompt was, I thought I could combine the two into one! So here is day 19 (dizzy) and day 20 (coral).
My little seahorse carousel was done with another Zoya Pixiedust shade (Levi) and a hot pink I LOVED (Byrdie), plus a classic OPI I've always enjoyed (My Boyfriend Scales Walls).
Trap was tough for me to figure out. I kept going back to a mouse trap, then I got really gory with the face trap used in the Saw movies, but then I thought of a Venus Fly Trap, and that parlayed into the Mario plant, aka the piranha plant!
I used a few essie colors (Strut Your Stuff, Cascade Cool, Ruffles & Feathers, and Snap Happy), Can't Read Without My Lipstick (OPI), and my favorite INM black (Black Hole) and white (White Porcelain) for the little piranha plant. I liked the subtle dots I did on my "Rodent" post, so I did a little bit of that again with alternating colors.
I've been wanting to make a convincing lightning look for a while, so today's prompt of "storm" was a great push to finally do it, and it wasn't hard to create!
I used a few Zoya colors (Liv, Dory, and Willa) and my super trusty white from INM, White Porcelain.
Part of Inktober is knowing your limits, and while technically, the sky's the limit, sometimes you just have to keep it simple! So here's a subtle little NASA rocket for day 16.
This design was simple, and only needed 3 colors, all of which were essie:
I literally had to sleep on this prompt because "outpost" didn't scream innovation to me. Then I thought about what it might be like to be stationed at an outpost, and how the isolation might start to drive you crazy. And that led to something even crazier than isolation...zombies! So here's my zombies breaking over the walls of an outpost.
I used all LVX polishes for this zombie takeover:
I'm so happy with Inktober so far! It's really expanded my horizons and I've loved it so much! Today I got to do some fantastic nail art on a dear coworker and friend, so when I got home, I decided that the "armor" look for day 14 would be a little more simple, but it's still striking if you ask me!
Here's my little crab, nature's natural knight, all armored up for this debut.
This was a pretty quick nail art to make tonight, as it only required 3 colors:
The prompt for today is "dune." I had a post saved from nailsbymimi on Instagram that reminded me of dunes in the sunset, so I decided to emulate her look for mine today.
Today's little rainbow is made up of:
Here's to all the Mario Kart players out there, who are painfully aware of how terribly "slippery" bananas can be. And they always seem to appear when you're about to win.
For the background, I used Mezmerised from essie, and for the bananas I used a few OPI colors including A-Piers to be Tan, Towel Me About It, Get in the Expresso Lane, Never a Dulles Moment, and The "It" Color.
Ready to be grossed out? By something truly disgusting for day 11 of Inktober? How about some raw meat with maggots on it?
To quote Dr. Ian Malcom, "life finds a way". And in that, there is "hope", so here's my "life finds a way" tribute to Jurassic Park, with a little flower peaking through concrete.
Today's Inktober prompt is "throw." I couldn't get "throw a dog a bone" out of my head, so I decided to just do a bunch of bones, in the spirit of Halloween and all.
Color Club inspired this look today with Look, Don't Tusk and What a Shock!
Last night, I posted a poll on my Instagram to see if you all wanted to see teeth for today's prompt as "scary" or "cute", and by a vote of 67% to 33%, the winner was scary!
So here's some bleeding gums for day 8 of Inktober.
I used only Zoya polishes for these freehanded chompers, including:
I've made it a week into Inktober 2020! Which design has been your favorite?
Today's prompt is "fancy", and as someone who isn't willing to pay more for a brand name for the sake of fashion, I consider lots of name brands "fancy". So here's a popular name brand you will probably recognize for today's look.
The two colors used for this "fancy" hand painted design are Elaine (Zoya) and A-Taupe the Space Needle (OPI).
Mickey Mouse counts as a "rodent" right? I know that word has a bad ring to it, but it's not such a bad thing to be a rodent, especially in Mickey's case.
The hand painted Mickey is over a dotticure of two Zoya oranges: Paz and Cora.
I got a little spooky with today's Inktober prompt. After all, you need a "blade" to carve Jack O' Lanterns!
The colors I used for this look were:
I LOVE today's nail art. The colors and the contrast with the black lines is a favorite for sure! The prompt for today was "radio", so I found a pin from someone's Pinterest after Googling "retro radio drawing" and just copied it and its colors.
The shades of polish I used for this retro radio are:
I'm excited to share this one. As soon as I heard today's prompt, "bulky", I knew I wanted to do a sweater. And I've been dying to try out the fuzzy sweater technique I've been seeing other artists do all over Instagram for a while now. Couple that with the new OPI Muse of Milan collection and its pretty fall colors and you've got yourself the perfect chunky sweater look!
The colors I used from the Muse of Milan collection are all gel. You could probably get the look from regular polish too, but it would take MUCH longer and I'm not sure it would have the same sort of 3D look. The colors I used are called:
Apparently a lot of folks were asking what "wisp" meant when the 2020 Inktober prompts were announced. From my video game experience, I knew it was something whispy, almost ghost-like. So for today's manicure, I was inspired by a post on Instagram from @nailssjunkie. She had some long stiletto nails that worked wonderfully for the look, but I just loved it so much and thought it was the perfect look for "wisp". The smoky effect epitomizes wisp.
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It took a while to get this look. It was a lot of layering with wet polishes and acetone, but only required two colors. I used Act Your Beige (OPI) for the base and then painted wisps of Black Onyx (OPI) over it. Dotting acetone to blur out the defined lines created the smoky effect.
Tomorrow's prompt is "bulky"...any guesses what that will be?
Welcome to my third year of Inktober! (To learn more about it, visit here.) I've loved doing this since I heard about it from someone I follow on Instagram. While it's actually meant for pen and ink artists, it is just such a creative outlet to try new things when I have nail artist's block. I'll be posting each day in October according to a list of prompts, and today's prompt is "fish".
As you know from my post in April, I started playing the video game "Animal Crossing: New Horizons" to pass the time during quarantine. One of the aspects of its gameplay is taking your character fishing. When you fish in the ocean, you often reel in a sea bass, much to the dismay of players as its a very common fish. So I paid it some homage with today's design.
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| Inktober Day 1: Fish |
I hand painted everything, which required a sea of mostly green colors, including:
