Hi, everyone!  I’m back!  Last week was a busy one for the hubby and me.  For the first part of the week, we babysat my brother and his wife’s 3 kids at their place while they were on vacation.  An 8, 6, and 3-year-old kept us good and busy!  Then we went up to Niagara Falls for a 3-day mini-vacation.  The falls only about a 5 1/2 hour drive from our place, so we try to get up there every few years.   Anyway, I’m back with a tutorial for you all today!

I wanted to do something that was Halloween-ish, but not super overt.   I also was in the mood to do some mixed-up patterns with a little bit of negative space.  Here’s what I came up with:

The first steps to every manicure is pretty much the same: deal with your cuticles and then apply a base coat.  After that I just applied a few green patches of polish:

I knew I wanted it make green, orange, and purple patches with two patches on each nail, so I knew I would need 3-4 patches of each color.  I also knew that I wanted shapes and sizes that appeared to be sort of random, so I made each of the patches different.  I then added orange polish:

I filled in the remaining spots with purple polish:

Then, using my dotting tools and little brushes, I added some patterns using the same orange, green, and purple polish:

Next, I outlined my patches in black with a thin brush dipped in acrylic paint:

Then I added “stitches” with the same brush in black acrylic paint:

And here’s my right hand:

I finished off with a top coat and then I did a little bit of clean-up with a brush dipped in acetone.   I really like how these turned out!  Cute and not too crazy.

I’ll leave you now with a few pictures from our little trip up to Niagara Falls:

Thanks for reading, following, and commenting!