Zombie French! My bloody spin on something cute.

So this manicure was inspired by 2 things.  One thing really good, and one thing a total fail.  The good would have to be these Franken French nails over at Claws Up!  I really liked it and thought it was really cute, but I wanted to try a non cute sort of version of it.  That leads me to the second thing that inspired me.  Almost a year ago I actually tried to decute a different Halloween manicure, and it just turned into one big mess.  It was one of the rare times I posted a fail.

For this manicure I actually used a lot of the same polishes and paints as it did last time with the exception of the OPI and red Essie.  I decided to still stick with a more zombified version and leave out the stitches.  I achived the finished look by painting 3 coats of Essie's Sew Psyched, then covering it with Seche.  Once the Seche was dry to the touch I would make a tiny hole maybe 5mm from the tip of my nail, and then pulled down gently so it tore, and looked like the skin was pulled back.  Next in and around the tear I blotted some black acrylic paint, then over that some bright red acrylic paint.  Then to make it a bit more real looking I added some Cult Nails Quench and Barry M Red Black. (Note:  I didn't clean my brush between colours like I normally do). Finally I smudged some red polish and brown paint of the rest of my nails to give them a dirty look.

This year I am really pleased with how my decuteting went.  Hope you like :)

Claw Polish - Phantom + The cutest zombie hand ever!

Let's just bang out the polish review first.  I actually won Phantom!   I was going to try and find a bottle of China Glaze Immortal(Halloween 2012) originally but when I won this my cravings for a shimmery gray had been satisfied.

Phantom is medium, leaning dark gray, with silver, blue and pink shimmer.  It was opaque in only 2 coats.  It was pretty much a perfect gray polish.  Honestly if you like gray polishes you should try and get your hands on this.  I can't tell you where to buy them or how much they are as I won this and have never seen it in stores.

 The pink was hard to capture, but you can see it here!

I wore it for 2 days before I decided I wanted to do some nail art on it.  So I thought it would be cute to do a little graveyard mani.  And my ring finger is a zombie hand reaching out.  I don't know why but my first thought was "That's a cute little hand."  My second thought was "It's probably a child."  Then I started thinking, would I have it in me to kill this undead child?  Probably.  The cross is a little decrepit and uneven looking, but I'm just going to say it's because it's an unknown grave, that has been neglected and forgotten over time.

I look mildly jaundice!

Brrrrraaaaiiinnnsss! Zombie Nails: Pt 1

So I did these nails for a contest over at The Polished Zombie's 200 reader giveaways.  I used mainly OPI's polishes on my nails along with Cult Nails Quench and Essie's Fishnet stockings. Oh and false nails that I roughed up.  And as you can see I didn't just stop at nails.  I figured I might as well go all out (well worth the hour I had all this on for).  Win or lose that gash is pretty badass. I would write more but I'm tired.  Enjoy!

ETA now that I'm a tad less tired: There is acrylic paint under the false nails make the nails look darker(they were white to begin with).  Then on top of the nails I sponged on OPI's Onyx, Over The Taupe and Suzi Loves Cowboys.  And around my cuticles and in the broken bits of nails I have Cult nails Quench and Essie's fishnet stockings.

 

 Everything I used