New Tips And Triks For You

As I've mentioned previously, Halloween is my favorite time of year. I love doing costumes, makeup, making fun of costumes...all of it. But while I do lots of stuff with clothes and beauty products during October, I tend to steer clear of doing my nails. Honestly, I've always sucked at painting mine, so I just don't really bother most of the time. This year, though, I decided to try my hand (hyuck hyuck) at a fairly easy one: the blood dripping manicure.

For Prabal Gurung 's Spring 2013 runway show, the designer picked this look for the models' nails:

Predictably, it didn't become a huge spring trend; April is generally not when people most want to imagine their fingers bleeding. But for Halloween, it's perfect! So here's how to do it, step-by-step.

Step 0: Start with clean hands and nails. I should probably have taken my own advice better because, upon looking at these photos, my hands look like crap and are stained from the previous polish I used.

Step 1: Apply a base coat. I used Sally Hanson Double Duty Strengthening Base & Top Coat.

Step 2: Apply one coat of a creamy pale polish, like ORLY* French Manicure in Pink Nude.

Step 3: Use a bobby pin dipped in the deep red polish (I picked OPI Nail Laquer in From A To Zurich) to plop on a little bit of color to the nail. Drag the polish upward toward the tip of the nail.

Step 4: Repeat 1 - 2 times per nail. You can even add a little random dot elsewhere as an extra "spatter."

Step 5: Connect the drips with a line of polish across the top. It doesn't have to be perfect straight; it can look like a messy French manicure (i.e. any French manicure I do on myself). Wait for the polish to fully dry.

Step 6 (optional): Apply a top coat for extra shine, such as the one from Sally Hanson I used as a base coat earlier.

On my other hand, my roommate did a French tip using the same red polish because I didn't feel too confident in doing the blood manicure with my left hand.

Voila! Now convince everyone your hands are bleeding because you're sadistic like that. Trick or treat, kinda!

*I always think of this when I read that polish's name:

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