Blood Splatter Expert Update

The post that draws the most attention to this blog is by far my Blood Splatter Expert.  And this year, before Halloween, it was linked on two blog sites for manicure ideas.  Now I get a lot of questions about how my flinging, Frankenstein contraption works.  So I took a short video that will hopefully shed some light on the how I get my splatter.  It's a bit tricky to do with your non-dominant hand.  It's also, obviously, extremely messy.  But I believe that the end result yields a better line of splatter than the straw method or the other experiments I tried.  Hope this helps.

Blue Splash

Back to the splatter manicure.  I had fun with neon this time (but I'm pretty sure I splattered everything in my path including my shirt).  Oh well, all the sacrifices for nail art!

I painted a base three coats of China Glaze Secret Peri-Wink-le.  I then splattered using my splatter contraption with China Glaze In The Lime Light.  One coat of Seche Vite was my top coat.

Neon Splatter

I painted this manicure about two weeks ago and haven't gotten around to posting it. I wanted to do a fresh take on my "Blood Splatter Manicure" and neons were my inspiration. Of course, the trouble with neons is they don't always photograph well--in true form, but I think you get the idea from these pictures. I wanted a neutral background to make the color pop and had recently picked up this base color from China Glaze's Tronica collection. It's supposed to be holographic, which is kind of hard to tell, but you can see it in th enlarged flash photo.

With Flash:

No Flash/Indirect Sunlight:

I painted three coats of China Glaze Cyberspace. I splattered the following colors on top: China Glaze In The Lime Light, Flip Flop Fantasy and Solar Power. CND Super Shiney was used for a top coat.

Christmas Splatter

I loved my previous "bloody splatter" so much that I wanted to try it with other questions. I do like the outcome of this manicure, but the metallic colors were not that easy to splatter. The gold worked better than the silver. I think it's because they are denser polishes, they needed more force to spatter than my contraption could handle. But I suppose it's like water marbling, not all colors work the way you want them to. Also, doing this manicure is really messy. I used petroleum jelly on my fingers, but the splatter was so wide spread during the process, I got it all over my hands--and the metallic polish was much harder to clean off than I expected. Oh well, all's well in the manicure world!

I used three coats of the alternating colors China Glaze Watermelon Rind and Zoya Lisa. I splattered China Glaze Cheers To You and Orly Glitz & Glamour. I finished the look with one coat of Seche Vite and one coat of Orly Sec 'n Dry due to the thickness of some of the splatter in order to help it dry faster.

Blood Splatter Expert

I kind of feel like one after trying do figure out how to actually splatter nail polish so it would replicate blood splatter and become the second look in my Halloween themed nails.  I needed a technique I could do with one hand that had maximum accuracy with minimum mess.  I tried flinging brushes, tools that spun, motorized toothbrushes, blowing polish through straws, dripping polish with different sized brushes--all to no avail to the look I was going for.  I was just about to give up, when my bathroom medicine cabinet showed me the light: floss picks.  I jimmied an angled floss pick on the lip of an upside down disposable Solo cup and used the floss pick as a catalyst to fling polish to my nail below.  It yielded pretty great results.  If you are going to try to replicate this manicure, I will warn you, it was MESSY.  I had a feeling it would be before I started so I put petroleum jelly around the top of my nail bed to help in clean up (as I do in water marbling) and it helped, but I didn't account for all the polish I would be inadvertently rubbing my palm in and the underside of my fingers and hand got pretty messy.  Thank goodness for lots of acetone nail polish remover and patience.

Left Hand

Right Hand Close

Overexposed Flash

The Splatter Contraption

Colors used for this look:  I coated with Essie Naughty N' Nice and splattered China Glaze Foxy for the blood splatter.  I realize that blood is not as beautifully sparkly as this blood-like color, but I went for pretty over reality :)  After the blood splatter dried, I coated once with Seche Vite and got to work on the nail bed, crime scene clean up!

UPDATE:  I added a video for you to watch the contraption in action!  Check it out!