Trick or Treat!

These were the second bunch of nails I created for the Halloween festivities last year. Wanted to go with more traditional designs on these ones so decided on the theme of Trick or Treat, painting scary things on my right hand and cutesy things on my left hand.
On my right hand I have blood splatter, a spider hanging from its web, a brain, a skull and a pumpkin with 'Trick'. On my my left hand I have a pumpkin with 'Treat', a ghost, a black cat, Frankenstein and a candy corn.
The candy corn in the background of these images is one of the many delicious treats I brought back from my trip to New York.

This was my costume and face paint I wore for our annual Halloween house party last year:

What's your favourite scary movie?

It seems at the end of every year I tend to slack off with my blog updates, so here I am again frantically uploading the remainder of last year's nail art in order to catch up...
These were my first Halloween nails I created for the festivities last year. Halloween is my favourite festival so I always try and do at least two different ideas. Since we were beginning to get all the Halloween favourites in at work I decided I should do a film theme. As I like a good mixture of children's and adults Halloween films I have done one hand of each with a different film on each nail.
On my left hand I have Casper, the sandworm from Beetlejuice, The Nightmare Before Christmas, the hoover Mary rides in Hocus Pocus, and the bottle of formula from The Witches. On my right hand I have the ghost face mask from Scream, Freddy's jumper and glove from A Nightmare on Elm Street, the DVD art cover of Halloween, Jason's mask from Friday the 13th, and the axe and 'REDRUM' from The Shining.
I make it my mission every year to watch at least a few of these films, particularly the kids ones.

This year I was working on Halloween so my housemates and I watched Cabin in the Woods together a few days before and I baked some Halloween cookies for the occasion. Here's how they turned out:

Yeah Bitch!

After their awesome win at the Golden Globe Awards on Sunday I realised it was about time I updated my Breaking Bad nail art onto my blog. I actually painted these back in September to celebrate the final ever episode.
On my left hand I have the 'Los Pollos Hermanos' logo (would've liked to have drawn the two chickens inside the blue circle but it proved to be too much tiny detail), Heisenberg, the Br and Ba periodic table symbols, and some blue crystal meth. On my right hand I have the bacon which Walt shaped into a 52 for his birthday, a gas mask, 'Yeah Bitch! Magnets' with a magnet, Hector Salamanca's bell and 'Better Call Saul!'.
I wanted to use a lot greens and yellows with these nails to mimic the colour scheme of the opening credits. Most of which are either Barry M or 17 colours. For the crystal meth nail I used a chunky glitter polish to start with for the texture, then painted over it with a blue metallic colour.
I miss Breaking Bad and it's a shame it had to end, however I shall be re-living it many more times with my DVD's.

O Christmas Tree

This year's advent calendar nails are in the theme of Christmas tree decorations. I painted my nails as windows with white snow in them before removing one nail a day and re-painting it with a design I had picked out specifically for that date. I wanted to use festive colours as the base coats so I chose 5 glitter colours - red, green, silver, gold and blue. For the blue I used Barry M Cyan Blue, then painted over it with a single coat of Barry M silver glitter so the blue still shone through.

The first day - the 15th - is a small green present with a gold bow.

The 16th is a fairy holding a pink balloon (as this day is my mum's birthday I always have to include something for her in there as well):

The 17th is a gold bell with a red ribbon:

The 18th is a white bauble with a red snowflake decorated on it:

The 19th is a gingerbread man:

The 20th is a miniature red and gold drum:

The 21st is a chocolate gold coin (for the base coat on this nail I decided to try out my new Barry M Textured Nail Effect in 'Lady'):

The 22nd is a silver reindeer:

The 23rd is two turtle doves, inspired by Home Alone 2, one of my favourite Christmas films:

The 24th is a Christmas stocking with candy canes sticking out the top:

Had a lovely Christmas this year with friends, family and kitty. Here's a pic of my cat 'enjoying' the festivities by the Christmas tree:

Hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas!

New York State of Mind

Went on an awesome trip to New York in September with my friends Lucille and Nina. I didn't actually give myself enough time to paint my nails before we left so I took a few colours with me and painted most of them when we arrived.
On my left hand I have the American flag, an apple on a glittery background, the Wooster Street Tattoo shop logo (went to NY Ink while we there and Lucille got a tattoo done by the lovely Luke Wessman), a New York taxi and a pretzel. On my left hand I have the New York skyline on a sunset gradient base (including the Statue of Liberty on my little finger) and I heart NY on my thumb.
Also in the background of these pics is my awesome new 'Paper Plane Weekend Bag' by Disaster Designs I bought specially for the trip.
Was an amazing holiday filled with adventures and although it was my second time in New York, we got to see so much more and I can't wait to go back again one day!

Here's a couple of pics from our trip:

 The three of us at Times Square and the awesome view from our hotel room.

I also have an Instagram account which I frequently update my nail art pics. If you're interested follow me: juliawizardofnails

Juicy Fruit

Created these just after a pretty bad flu bug I had back in September. I was overdosing on vitamin C and fresh fruit for the entire week so this gave me inspiration for my next nail art.
On my left hand I have a melon, an orange, blackberries, a pear and strawberries. On my right hand I have cherries, grapes, an apple, a peach and bananas.
I decided to add an extra bit of pattern to the background of these nails as they seemed quite plain with just the fruit, so I painted various colours of polka dots onto the base colours before painting the fruit over them.
Fingers crossed I won't be painting fruit nails again for a while...

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...