Blood and Bones

Not quite Halloween nails at the time but as we're now in the month of Halloween it's appropriate to add these to the blog. I created these in September when I had just received my latest pair of Black Milk leggings, the Splatter Skulls, which are in the background of these images. As they are now the 10th pair that I own from them I thought I'd celebrate by matching my nails to my legs.
I was originally going to paint skulls instead of skeleton parts to match them up with the leggings but I decided instead to add other areas of the skeleton (plus I was running a little short on time and bones are easier to paint than skulls). My left hand has the pelvis, the ribs and a leg bone. My right hand has the spine, a hand and a foot.
I am happy with how these turned out, especially the shading on the pelvis, which I painted by adding a little bit of dark grey and lightly stippling onto the white pelvic bone area. I painted the blood splatter by painting the detail in white to begin with, as red doesn't show up straight onto black, then I went over with a bright red - my favourite at the moment is the Barry M Gelly in 'Blood Orange'.
Looking forward to saving up for my next pair of Black Milks, got my eye on the Haunted House 2.0 ones from the Halloween collection at the moment...

Carnival!

It seems I'm a bit behind with my updates at the moment. It's been two months since my last blog but I've still been doing the nail art so I have many updates to post on here.
I painted these for Notting Hill Carnival at the end of August. Decided I wanted to do something bright and colourful so I looked into what the carnival represents and previous images of costumes to get some ideas. It was also FrightFest during the same weekend and I always make an effort to see at least one film there every year. I painted FrightFest nails last year however so I wanted to do something different this year.
On my left hand I have the 'FrightFest 2013' logo, a Jamaican flag, red yellow and green gradient with a palm tree, a pineapple and a cannabis leaf. On my right hand I have red green and yellow leopard print, a corn on the cob, a pink glittery butterfly wing, a Trinidad and Tobago flag and multi-colour gradient zebra print.
I wanted to experiment a lot with gradients when painting these nails. Most people use a sponge when creating gradients which is an easier way to do it, however I prefer to use a brush and stipple on the colour because it gives me control and the colour tends to come out stronger. This technique does take much longer though as the colours need to be layered a lot.
Had a great time watching the parade at the carnival, luckily the weather was beautiful as well. The horror film I went to see at FrightFest was 'Painless', a very good Spanish horror set in Civil War times. It also included some amazing prosthetic effects.