Happy Halloween!

  Ahh yes, boys and ghouls, it's the most wonderful time of the year again!  I'm talking about Halloween...what did you think I meant?!  I can't get enough of kitschy decor, fake blood, and fun-sized candy bars!!

Such a shame I didn't get a proper shot of my lovely neck scar, which you can barely see here!

  OK first let me just talk about my costume makeup for just a second here.  I was really pleased with how this look turned out!  I wanted a green face without having to cover myself in greasy makeup, but I didn't want to end up with a bloodless zombie face, so powder was out!
  I have this epic palette of high-end grease paints from Make Up For Ever that I am absolutely obsessed with!  The green on my face is straight from the palette with no added tints.  The colors are rich and beautiful and I absolutely adore it, but caveat emptor: these paints are greasy as fuck.  Now, I'm an oily-faced lass to begin with, but these are pretty insanely slippery when you first put them on!  This means a few things, both good and bad.  Happily, this makes it insanely easy to apply and also to fix any mistakes once you've got it on your face.  Unfortunately, it also means you need to give it proper time to cook, girl.  Gotta let that shit just SIT THERE for a good hour before I feel confident.   
  Additionally, it pretty much requires a finishing powder, so you're stuck with a velvet finish whether you want it or not.  I use Swagger finishing powder, which I ALSO freaking love.  Now, I love MUFE, but their finishing powder is half the size and twice the price, and it is made of exactly the same thing!!  WHAT in the WHAT, girl!   Don't be dumb, comparison shop.  And support small business!  The whole Swagger line is handmade by the divine Blake Karamazov in San Francisco!  We will be revisiting her again soon, to be sure...
  The lips are Jamaica by Ka'Oir, which is pretty great, too.  It's pretty creamy, and suuuper pigmented, so you don't have to put a heaping ton on to turn normal-girl-colored lips green!  I'm not crazy about the way it smells, but it's a small quibble.  I mean, it's not like it stinks.  It's fairly long-lasting and comfortable to wear, so I would recommend it.  The brand has all the freaky colors you have been wanting but unable to find.
  The eyeliner is a cream liner by MUFE, which I used on my stitches as well.  This shit is the BOOOOOMB!!!  I will never use liquid liner again, I swear to you.  This stuff is the total opposite of the paint palette - it's super waxy and dries quickly!  It stays richly black and flexible all day, too - no crusty, flaky business.  PLUS it doesn't require a powder to stay in place. Hurrah! Well worth the price.  I love it so much I would marry it. 
  My skin has nothing but mineral powder and the soft, forgiving sheen of my webcam's meager flash.

 

Completing the look with a Bride of Frankenstein bouffant and some gangrenous sutures!

  Now I've been dying to try a little spooky dripping blood look on my nails, but red just wasn't gonna match my Frankenstein ensemble, so I went with neon orange and green spooky slime!  I love neons, but they are almost always a slightly translucent gel, which is not great for coverage over dark colors, and naturally I needed a black backdrop for my Nickelodeon-colored slime nails.  Solution?  Mix one drop of white polish to four or five drops of neon polish, and viola! You have opaque neons!  Sure, they end up being a slightly paler hue, but once you've got it on your hands, no one will be the wiser!

To paint the slime, I used a combination of a thin, stout nail brush, and a small dotting tool.  The dotting tool was great for applying even coverage and achieving the drips.  In fact, the dotting tool is the most useful for this look.  I highly recommend using something similar, but in a pinch, a nice toothpick or even a dry (and cleaned!) ball-point pen will do lovely!  Be sure to wipe the tip every couple of dots to keep your tool precise and your polish from getting gooey.

Pretty sure these pants are the backdrop to 50% of my photos...

THIS IS AMERICA!!

We take dress-up themes very seriously.

  If you know me at all, you know I have precious little civic pride, but that isn't going to stop me from enjoying a thematic dress-up opportunity or the chance to paint my nails the appropriate holiday theme!  Hence, AMERICA! The Manicure was born.  I really wanted to paint a few little flags, unfortunately the US flag looks like about a hundred other flags in the world (have you seen Liberia's flag?  Seriously it looks exactly like what I'd paint a "simplified" US flag as) and I really didn't want to have some Texas-ass-lookin' flag, either, so I had to get crafty.
  I recently ordered some nail striping tape as part of an Amazon nail-accoutrements binge.  They came as a set of ten colors for only a couple bucks, but the tape is so so thin (only about 1/10 cm) that it's really kind of hard to work with.  I found that it was better to firmly adhere the tape to my nails before trimming the edges to length.
  I generally prefer to use the tape just as masking, because tape on nails never really stays put, no matter how many layers of top-coat you apply.  But I had to make an exception because I just didn't want to get into the nightmare of masking off all the stripes of the flag.  So, there's a bit of both going on here, though the flags were made much easier with the help of super-skinny white tape!

  As per usual, not a great picture but you get the idea.  It's always an epic battle to balance sharpness with accurate color on my stupid little digital camera, but I do try.  This red is a newsie from Revlon (my love!) called Fearless, it's a totally gorge slightly orangey-red, and it's just perfect.  It's almost a poppy red, great for the summer.  I currently have it on my toes and it's giving me another reason to just stare at my feet when I walk!