Spooky Splatter Nails (+ Tutorial)

It's Saturday evening and what am I doing? Writing a blog post of course! I just saw Looper -- not too shabby, in my opinion! Anyway, despite the hour, I thought it would be cool to post my first Halloween nail art look.

If you've never done a splatter before, they are actually pretty easy and just take a small amount of practice to get right. Here's how I do mine!

You'll need a drinking straw cut in half, a few colors of polish, tape, and wax paper.

1. Start by painting your nails a base color.
2. Cover your workspace with wax paper to protect from flying polish. Cover more space than you think you need to... better to be safe than sorry.
3. Tape off your fingers (if you are unfamiliar with how to do this there's a great tutorial here).
4. Dip the half straw right into the bottle of polish. You can wipe a bit off the sides when removing it from the bottle but try not to disturb the polish inside the straw.
5. Hold the end of the straw about six inches from your nail. Shoot a quick and strong puff of air through the straw to propel the polish onto your nail. Repeat on all fingers.
6. Remove the tape from your fingers and begin cleanup. I use a cotton swab dipped in remover on the larger areas of my finger and a cheap makeup brush dipped in acetone to clean up around my cuticles.
7. Let your splatters set, and finish with topcoat.

It is messy, so don't think you'll just get to spray on polish and be done. Cleanup is an important part of this technique and can take quite some time. I love splatters though and think the time investment is worth it!

If you've been following me for a long time, you may recall that I did a Halloween splatter last year, too! It was actually written as a guest post, and when I went to check it, the post didn't appear to be live anymore. However, I've added the rest of my photos to the post so you can at least check them out on my page!

This year's splatter is a little simpler. I had been wearing OPI Y'all Come Back Ya Hear? for a day and when I got home I decided to make it a bit more festive for the season. I grabbed OPI Black Onyx and added on a single layer of black splatter. My splatters are usually really busy and complex so it was kind of cool for me to keep this one minimal.

What do you guys think? Have you done a splatter manicure before, and did you like it? Is it worth the mess?

Thanks for reading, and look out for some more Halloween nail art soon!