Julep InstaGrim Part III: Chevron Candy Corn

Hi everyone! I’ve got the third installment of my Julep InstaGrim series, which completes my Halloween manicures! As I’ve described before, I created a series of Halloween nail art designs for Julep in order to help them promote their contest on Instagram, and am dedicating a blog post to each one; you can read more about it in my first post of the series. This latest one is about my version of candy corn nail art, which is to make a “Chevron Candy Corn” manicure. In total, the designs are:

1. Haunted Hollow
2. Ghastly Gradient
3. Chevron Candy Corn

The chevron candy corn design was inspired by some chevron decals that Julep sold in the October Maven window, which I picked up. When I was thinking of nail art to do for the InstaGrim contest, I thought of candy corn nail art because I love candy corn, but then I thought – nah, that’s been done to death. But then I thought: well, what about candy corn with a twist? And then these chevron decals came to mind, and I was sold on the idea! Chevrons are a great graphic pattern (quite suitable for bright colors) and they’re very of-the-moment. Plus decals/stencils are so easy to use to create clean lines. I didn’t end up using the Julep decals because I thought my friend Kimi might like them, so I came up with a DIY alternative for those of you who are not in possession of chevron decals. They work, but you can probably get better results with the professional ones. Read on to learn how to do them and see the tutorial!

Julep InstaGrim Part II: Ghastly Gradient

Hi everyone! I have another design in my series that I made for the Julep InstaGrim contest (see contest rules here), which I talked about being a part of in my last post showing the “Haunted Hollow”. As I said earlier, Julep (whose polishes I love!) let me make a Halloween-themed nail art design for the contest and, instead of coming up with just one, I ended up with three ideas that I simply could not choose between! So each one is getting its own blog post!

This is the second part in the series, which I call the “Ghastly Gradient” (like my alliterative names?). I was inspired by Julep’s Casper, a glow-in-the-dark glitter polish, to make something that glows and – naturally – I thought of ghosts given the name (how obvious of me…). Glow-in-the-dark ghosts definitely screams “Halloween” to me! I decided to make small ghosts so I could put multiple on each nail, and opted to put them on a smoky purple gradient to make them look mystical. On with the nail art!

Julep InstaGrim Part I: Haunted Hollow

Hi everyone! I have some exciting news today – something SO incredible that I can’t believe it’s even real! In short (more details after the cut!), Julep asked me to create Halloween-themed nail art for their ongoing “InstaGrim” contest, and I accepted! WOOHOO!!! I was given free reign over the design I chose to do, so I went wild and made, not one, but THREE designs because I couldn’t choose just one idea! Julep makes some fantastic polishes and products that inspired me in different ways, and that’s how I ended up with three good ideas. So I’m writing about each in a separate blog post!

This post is about my first design in the three-part InstaGrim series: the Haunted Hollow. It’s the hardest design I did out of the three, and the one that Julep used as the featured picture for their page (and my personal favorite!). You know how in some movies, there are those creepy trees whose bark patterns kind of look like faces? Yeah, that’s what I was going for. I wanted to put those trees in a spooky forest with mysterious, glowing eyes coming out of the darkness. In order make this design extra-awesome, I used a black light reflective white polish (Julep Dana) to make the eyes really glow in the dark!

Purple Duochrome Swirls with Zoya

Hi everyone! Today I have some two-color nail art today that features two purple polishes from Zoya! While I’m still busy with all my crazy work this month, I still found some time to do this in between all of my responsibilities; of course, it does help that one of my biggest tasks got postponed to November/December…

Anyways, this design was prompted by my recent discovery of Zoya Adina (a purple-based duochrome with a green shift). I found myself entranced by this magical photo of Adina that Zoya posted a month ago on its social media sites, and couldn’t resist getting it once Zoya put out some great promotional deals. I mean, seriously amazing promotions. So good that I basically bought my entire polish wishlist in one order. That’s one of the best things about Zoya: when they have a sale, they have a SALE. One of the other polishes I bought in that order was Margo, which is one of the new polishes from the Entice Fall 2014 collection. It’s a highly saturated medium grape purple creme, and I love it! This shade is so flattering on my skin tone, and I’m very fond of how vivid and intense it is. It made total sense in my mind to pair Margo with Adina, since they are both great purple shades and they look good together. I chose to do these soft swirls to give Adina a chance to shine without being overwhelming.

Julep October 2014 Maven Swatches, Comparisons, and Nail Art

Hi everyone! I hope you’re ready for this because I have my biggest post EVER! My biggest work task got postponed to November/December so I had more free time to make this post amazing. Today I have a huge review post about my picks from the Julep October 2014 Maven collection (Black Magic). Like I have done in previous months (July, August, and September), I swatched all the colors, did some comparisons, and then combined all my picks into nail art. This month, I have a tutorial for my nail art as well! Julep’s October polishes were mostly dark colors with a mix of different finishes. I was most interested in the Classic with a Twist (CwT) box, but added on two polishes from the It Girl box (Shailene and Dana) because they looked intriguing. Funny enough, CwT is my default style profile, but I never picked that box for any of the months I’ve been in the Maven program…until now.

I was much more intrigued by the color choices for October than for September. If you recall, I tend to prefer other finishes than cremes because I think they allow for more diversity and originality compared to solid colors, especially when I’m buying expensive nail polish. Given the abundance of non-cremes in this collection, I was hopeful that I’d get something I was really happy with. From the online swatches Julep provided, though, I had some reservations about what some of the polishes would look like in real life. The shimmers looked a little, well, “un-shimmery” in the photos. Since I’m not interested in shimmers that basically look like cremes, I was apprehensive I wouldn’t like my choices. Thankfully, I am quite happy with most of the colors I chose, so, without further rambling, I present: my Julep October 2014 swatches!

Pumpkin Patch Nail Art with Julep

Hi everyone! I am back with exciting nail art…finally! This month’s outrageous workload may be wearing me down a lot, and we’re only one week in, but I still really wanted to do nail art so I made it happen.

Today I’ve got another seasonal design to add to my fall nail art catalog: a pumpkin patch! The idea for this design came about when I shopped at Julep’s secret store this month and picked up the “Pumpkin Patch” duo (Mariska and Lizanne). When I thought about the two colors together, I went with the obvious and decided to use both polishes, plus a whole bunch of others, to paint a pumpkin patch on my nails. Since this idea was pretty heavily related to Julep’s “Pumpkin Patch” duo, I decided to go with Julep polishes for the whole thing. Besides, so many Julep polishes are sitting in my box of untrieds – just waiting to have their moment to shine – so I thought I’d give a bunch of them a go. I have a mini-tutorial at the end for anyone interested in seeing the process!

There really have been quite a few fall designs that I’ve done recently. Autumn is definitely nail art season for me.

Subtle Glitter Sandwich Gradient French Tips

Hi everyone! I have a new manicure today that features gradient French tips done using the “glitter sandwich” technique, which is an incredibly simple and easy process. It’s so simple and easy, in fact, that I can make glitter sandwich nails even when my life gets crazy, as it will be for this entire month! Like I said in my last post, don’t expect elaborate or frequent nail art from me until November because I have a TON of things to do until then, and nail art is simply not high on my priority list. Nail art for me is a fun hobby – and a welcome respite from work-related stress – but I know my limits, and will have to cut back a bit temporarily.

I removed my previous manicure a little sooner than I may have liked because I had to go to an event this weekend with a conservative dress code, and I just didn’t feel comfortable going in gray and red nails. This glitter sandwich manicure is a relatively subdued and demure way to wear nail art, while still being fun and sparkly. And, of course, the fact that it is soooo easy to do is quite appealing. I’d highly recommend trying to do a glitter sandwich manicure if you’re a nail art beginner, and/or you want your nails to look subdued while still trying out glitter in nail art. The glitter sandwich was actually one of the techniques I learned in the very beginning of my nail art hobby, and the very first photo I ever took of my nails uses this technique. I’ve included the photo in this post as a throwback, just so you can see how far I’ve come. I’m almost too embarrassed to post it, but I’m gonna do it!

Modern Shiny/Matte French Manicure with Wet n Wild Roadwork

Hi everyone! I have some simple nail art today because this month is CRAAAAZY for me…and we’re only two days in! For work, I have a whole bunch of projects to finish, or significantly work on, by the end of the month and I’m quite anxious about getting everything done. And these are not small projects – these are really big and REALLY IMPORTANT. Therefore, I’m going to warn all of you readers in advance that my nail art this month may be a little underwhelming, and will be on the simpler/easier side. Most likely, I will also be posting less frequently (the last time I posted was over a week ago), so don’t expect too much from me this month. I was really looking forward to doing some really fabulous landscapes soon, but now I may have to postpone that until the somewhat less busy months of November and December.

Anyways, my manicure today is a modern French manicure that uses a brand new color from the Wet n Wild Megalast line called “Roadwork”. By “modern”, I mean that the colors I chose are not sheer pink or white, and that I played with shiny and matte topcoats on the different regions of my manicure. My idea for this manicure actually came from a set of fake nails at a drugstore that I saw and loved, so I decided it would be fun to do something similar on my real nails. Once I saw Roadwork from the new Wet n Wild Halloween collection, I knew I wanted it to be the base color and everything fell into place.