Wacky Laki: 31DC2013 Day 29 - Inspired by the Supernatural

I've got only a few days left to complete in the 31 Day Nail Challenge and I couldn't be more excited. Day 29 of the challenge called for a manicure inspired by the supernatural. Since Halloween is just around the corner, all things ghost and goblin came to mind. I've been wanting to try this particular technique for creating sheer ghosts for a while. I'm not sure who originally came up with the idea, but I see it done a lot these days...

For this manicure, I used a base of Cult Nails Disciplined. It is a sheer gray with a beautiful shimmer. You can see my swatches of it at the end of this post. Since I love for my Halloween manis to glow in the dark, I added SinfulColors Glow in the Dark top coat on top. To really get the glow effect that I wanted, it required a 3 coats. For my pinkie, I used a black base. You can see the amount of cloudiness that the GITD top coat adds..

I did a combination of stamping and free hand for the nail art. The trees I stamped from Messy Mansion plate MM38 using KleanColor Black. I added the tombstone using black polish. With white acrylic paint, I added the lettering. To create the ghosts, I watered down white acrylic paint and painted the ghosts on my nails. When the paint started to dry a little bit around the edges, I removed what was still liquid with a dry brush. This is a really easy way to give them this sheer ghostly look...

Of course I was hoping to see the ghostly outlines when the manicure would glow in the dark, but they really were barely there even to the camera....

A quick swatch of SinfulColors Glow in the Dark top coat. The application was great. At one coat it didn't obscure the base color very much, but it also didn't glow much at just one coat. I needed three coats to really get a good glow. I was rather disappointed by the amount of coats needed since not only does it muddy up the base color, but it also takes forever to dry! The glow on the nails faded pretty quickly after the lights were off. This shot is after charging under a lamp for ~30 seconds. It glowed like this for a few seconds before it started to fade and finally settled on a weaker glow. Considering how bright it glows in the bottle, I wasn't overly impressed with the glow on my nails.

Cult Nails Disciplined
A sheer gray jelly filled with blue and purple shimmer. Application is very nice and easy to work with. I was a little caught off guard at how sheer this really is, but I think the sheerness really allows the shimmer to shine through. It is buildable on it's own, but at three coats the nail line for me was still visible. I anticipate the next time I wear this, I will be layering it over gray undies. Swatches are with no top coat...

Swatch Details
	Brand: Cult Nails Collection: Behind Closed Doors - Limited Edition Color Name/Number: Disciplined Number of coats: 3 Top Coat: No Free of Dibutyl Phalates (DBP), Toulene, Formaldehyde, Camphor, and Formaldehyde Resin