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!

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!