Sugar Spun Candy Corn Nails

Hello Lovelies!  We are officially one week into October, which means that Halloween is only three weeks away! Many of you already know that Halloween is my favorite holiday ever! For many people Halloween is all about the candy and goodies, so I decided to represent with the most iconic Halloween candy of all, candy corn.  Personally, I don't like candy corn but I love the colors and everybody thinks Halloween when they see them.  Last year I created a gradient candy corn design, so this year I wanted to try something a little different...

Materials I used:
Basecoat - SuperChic Lacquer "Bring It On!"
Polishes - Sinful Colors "Black on Black", Butter London "East End" & "Brick Lane"
Scotch tape
Toothpick
Topcoat - SuperChic Lacquer "Marvel"

I began with a black base polish topped with a quick drying topcoat.

Once dry, I prepped my finger by placing two pieces of scotch tape to create a triangular shape on my finger.  Using my Uber Mat as a work surface, I placed three dots of polish in white, orange, and yellow.  In order to create a sugar spun design the polish needs to thicken enough to become stringy.  When you are able to pull the polish up with a toothpick its ready for spinning.  Stir the polish a bit with the toothpick to speed up the process a bit.  When the polish is ready, simply pull strings of polish across the nail until you are satisfied with the coverage,  I repeated this process with each color.

When finished spinning, remove the tapes.  Clean up with gentle acetone and a brush if necessary.  I chose not to apply any topcoat over this, because I didn't want to ruin the textured affect.  If you choose to use a topcoat be sure to allow ample time for the design to dry, otherwise it will run when you apply the topcoat.

Even though I don't like the taste of candy corn I love this look, and it was incredibly easy to create.

I hope you enjoyed this quick simple Halloween nail art design too.  Thanks for stopping by, see you next time.

Your Fellow Plebe,

 



Sugar Spun Chocolate Covered Strawberry Nail Art Design

For this week's #whatruwearingwed manicure I decided to complete this week's Nail Polish Queen's Weekly Challenge to create sugar spun nails.  I have seen this design technique many times but have never tried it simply because it doesn't really appeal to me and it looks rather messy.  However, I decided I should give it a try so that I can determine how easy/hard, and/or messy it is to see if I could come up with any tips to help out my fellow Plebes that might be interested in this nail art design.

Every sugar spun design that I've seen reminds me of fancy chocolates and various chocolate covered fruits.  So, I decided to kick this challenge up a small notch and create 'Sugar Spun Chocolate Covered Strawberry Nails.'

Materials
Base coat
Red polish
Green polish (nail art stripper or a thin brush for application)
Black polish
Brown polish
Off white, pink, or light brown polish for sugar spinning
Flat work surface (like a piece of thick paper or cardboard)
Toothpick

I started out with one clean coat of China Glaze's 'Seeing Red' (one of my new polishes from 'The Giver' collection, swatches and review coming soon).

Then using a green nail art striper I created a leafy top along the smile line (aka cuticle) of my nail .

With black polish and a toothpick a made some strawberry seeds.  I did not place seeds all the way to the tip of my nail because the tip will be covered.  (If you decided not to cover your strawberries in chocolate place seeds all the way down to the tip of the nail.)

At this point we are going to start covering your strawberries in chocolate.  I recommend that if you are going to do the sugar spun design that you go ahead and take the polishes that you are going to spin and drop them on to a flat (non permeable, you don't want the polish to leak through) surface and set them aside to let dry to a tacky state, sorry but I don't have a picture of this.

Covering the strawberries with chocolate is a lot like creating ice cream nails (click this link to see ice cream nail art design).  Start with a brown polish and a medium size dotting tool to create a drip line.  Then fill in the nail from drip line to tip with the same polish.  For my brown polish I used Color Club's 'Fondue for Two' from the Paris in Love collection.

I also went ahead and applied a top coat at this point.  From what I have read the sugar spun design typically does not get a top coat because it has a tendency to bleed and take away from the textured affect.  However, I wanted some kind of top coat to protect the majority of the design.

Now it is time to get messy, and sadly it is true that this part is messy.  Hopefully, by this time the polish that you set aside a little bit ago is now thick enough that when you put a toothpick into it that it is stringy.  In other words you can pull strings of polish out with the toothpick.

Using your gooey nail polish and a toothpick, simply pull up strands and pull them across your nail.  Repeat this process until you reached the desired look and coverage that you'd like.  That's really all there is to it.  For my sugar spinning I used Color Club's 'Je T'Aime' and 'Macaroon Swoon' in addition to 'Fondue for Two' all from the Paris in Love collection.

Sugar spinning is not really all that difficult.  The only pointers I can offer to make this experience a little easier, is make sure that you give the polish enough time to get thick.  On my first try the polish was not thick enough and it took me many try to get the strings to pull up enough to go all they way across the nail.  You can stir your polish with the toothpick to speed up the thickening time. Make sure you use a flat working surface so that you can get your finger really close to your puddle, even when the strings pull nicely they don't pull very far.  I also found that if I pulled the strings slowly I could get them to go farther.  Other, than that just have a messy fun time with it, you really can't do this technique wrong.

I'm curious how many of you out there have tried sugar spun nails before?  Did you like it?  Have you done it again or will you do it again?  For those of you who haven't tried it, do you think you ever will?

I hope you enjoyed my #whatruwearingwed manicure, I'd love to see what you are (or are not) wearing today.  Head over to my Facebook page and post your pictures there with a description, or post your pictures on Instagram with the previously mention hashtag and tag @polish_plebe in the comments.  Be sure to like/follow me while your there, you can also follow me by clicking the 'Join this Site' Icon on the top right hand side of the screen or through Google+, Bloglovin, and/or Pinterest.  Thank you for stopping by, see you next time.

Your Fellow Plebe,