If you don't like waiting for your nails to dry and hate doing tricky and intricate freehand nail designs (like me) then you need to take a look at these three very easy and quick Halloween inspired nails designs. I took to Pinterest to look for some spooky nail inspo and came up with three very different but very easy and super cute Halloween nail designs, perfect for those who don't want to spend ages painting their nails or struggle with tiny details and fiddly nail accessories. Keep on reading to find out these three quirky nail ideas just in time for Halloween.
Striped Nails
Firstly I have this glittery orange/red and black striped nail design, inspired by the Tim Burton-esque stripes and Freddy Kruegers classic striped jumper. For this design I used an old Miss Sporty nail polish in a colour called Crush On You as the base colour, but unfortunately this colour isn't sold anymore so you can use any orange nail polish you like, the Esssence Nail & Cuticle Tattoo Liner and the Sally Hansen Double duty Base & Top Coat.
Start by prepping nails, filing them etc, and applying a layer of base coat to create a good, smooth base for your nail design; when that has dried, apply a layer of two of your chosen orange polish. I opted to add a layer of top coat after the polish had dried, as the glittery polish was bumpy and I thought it would be better to create a smooth base before drawing on my stripes, but you don't have to add a top coat here if you don't need it, instead you can go straight in with your tattoo liner, or black Sharpie if you have one lying around and steadily draw 3 or 4 black stripes on each nail. Finally apply a final layer of top coat to seal your stripes in, but wait for the stripes to dry a first as they may smudge when applying the top coat, which you don't want to happen.
While this design does involve some free hand drawing, stripes are the easiest thing to draw, and you can always get someone with a steady hand to help if you need it. It doesn't matter if your stripes are thin or fat or are all different thicknesses, anything goes with this nail design.
Little Ghostie Nails
For this simple nail idea, you can use any colour you want, black, blue, red, glitter or leave your nails clear, just don't use a white polish otherwise you wont be able to see your ghosties; apply your base coat and then paint on your nails colour of choice. I used the Maybelline Colour Show Ocean Blue Nail Polish for this as I already had this on my nails and didn't want to repaint them because I'm lazy.
When your polish has completely dried, grab yourself a white nail polish and an optional dotting tool and nail brush, I didn't use these tools but if you have them it will make it so much easier. Paint on, either with the dotting tool or with the attached brush, a white blob anywhere you want on each nail, but try to keep it as neat as possible, this blob will be the head of the ghost so keep that in mind when choosing where you add the white. Next you can grab your thin nail brush if you have one (a tiny paint brush would work too) or stick to the attached nail brush and carefully add on the body/tail of your ghost, which can fall straight underneath the head or can curve off to the side, some can even be upside down if you want.
Make sure that all of your nails are completely dry before adding on their faces; this time I chose to use a sharpie instead on my nail tattoo liner, and I drew little eyes and mouth onto each of the ghosts, giving some smiles and some O shaped mouths to add some character to each ghostie. Now add a nice thick coat of top coat to seal your nail art in and voila, your nails now have cute little ghosts haunting them; I think this design would be great for kids if you could get one to sit still long enough to paint their nails.
Patchwork Nails
My last easy nail idea is a patchwork nail design inspired by the dress word by Sally from The Nightmare before Christmas. Sally's dress is actually yellow, pink and teals, but you can choose whichever three colours you want; I decided on three colours I thought were particularly Halloweeny, red, green and purple. I polishes I used for this design were Makeup Gallery Time To Shine Polish Ruby Red, Barry M Nail Paint Spring Green and PS. Grape Soda Nail Polish.
To start this design, take one of your chosen colours and paint a little onto your nails, make sure you're keeping the lines straight though as you'll have to 'stitch' each of the colours together (use the photo to the right if you're not sure what I mean). Paint your nails with each of the nail polishes until you've completely covered the nail and wait for them to dry before moving on.
For the next step you can use a sharpie or the nail tattoo liner I used earlier, but this time I chose to go for black acrylic paint and a very thin paint brush; this technique worked well so I'd recommend giving it a try if you can. Paint or draw on a thin black line where each of the different colours meet on your nail; if you have shaky hands then maybe get some help for this step. Now you'll need to paint tiny lines over the top of the longer black lines you've just painted, these will be the 'stitches' that will make it look as if different pieces of material have been sewn together.
Make sure to finish the whole thing off with a top coat, once everything has all dried of course, to make your newly painted Halloween nails last until the big day. If you wan't a little sparkle with this design then add on a glitter top coat. Remember, is all else fails then you can always stick on a pair of spooky false nails, Primark have some gruesome Halloween nails in stock right now.
There are my three easy peasy Halloween nail designs, I hope you liked them all. Leave me a comment letting me know which one you liked most and what you'd do differently with them. I hope you're all having a fantastic October day and I hope to see you back here again tomorrow for my Halloween makeup blog post.
India X