Happy Halloween!!! Candy, Nail Art & My Halloween Costume - Image Heavy

*Post contains affiliate links. Purchases made via affiliate links provide small commissions to me but do not affect the purchaser's end of the transaction.

Hello lovelies and happy Halloween. This is my favorite time of year so boy do I have a post for you! It has candy and nail art and my Halloween costume! Are you ready?

Candy is essential to Halloween. No matter if you're manning the door for the hordes of fairy and monster (or Anna and Elsa this year) dressed trick or treaters, going out and knocking on doors yourself (with or without kids), or turning off your lights and gorging yourself on it while vegging with a night of horror movies this holiday kinda revolves around candy. So I thought, besides chocolate covered candy bars, that I would share one of my favorite candies with you.

I am being completely serious when I say Torie & Howard have some of the best, most amazing hard candy - and it's organic too if that makes a difference to you. The d'anjou pear & cinnamon candy (as seen in the Halloween bowl above) is my favorite of favorites.

How did I get enough to fill a Halloween bowl ... and still have some left over you ask? Is this a sponsored post where you get free candy to feed us a line? NO! I was subscribed to the Love with Food monthly box and got a sample in last year's Halloween box. Love ... there's no more to say. I searched and searched but couldn't find them around here and couldn't talk myself into paying shipping for candy (yet). I was at my breaking point when Love with Food had a sale on their website. I immediately used my referral and review points ... and bought a 5 pound bag. Yes, you read that right - a 5 pound bag.

Image Credit: Torie & Howard

Torie & Howard were so nice. They sent me my 5 pound bag of candy, a handwritten letter, a sample bag of all their flavors and an info packet that told me they were getting a new flavor! Meyer Lemon & Raspberry. How will I ever live without trying this new flavor? I don't know. If you can't live without trying these hard candies (and believe me you really can't!) head over to the Torie & Howard website and pick up some of your own or use their store locator to see if they're being sold near you. ;)

Halloween (at least for us nail people) is about what Halloween inspired nails we're wearing. Mine used a base of Instant Primordial Soup Mix from my Casper inspired Give Up The Ghost Collection.

Very simple to do with the right tools. I used my Silhouette machine to cut out spooky pumpkin faces and used the outside shape as a guide to sponge into instead of using the vinyls themselves. I just like the smoother feel this gives my nails better than painting over vinyls. As for the pumpkin faces ... I'm seeing Jack Skellington, Oogie Boogie ... and oddly The Snowmen from Doctor Who. Not sure about any others ... what do you see in the faces?

But the very best part of these nails ... they glow in the dark!!! And since I painted black over the glow you can see the faces perfectly when they glow. :)

And what Halloween is complete without a costume? For me - no Halloween! It's a tradition of mine to dress up and hand out candy and last night was the night for our community. Sadly, we live on the outskirts of a small town and the kids around here have pretty much outgrown trick or treating. We got one trick or treater and they came early so I wasn't fully in costume. :( So I'll share with you in hopes of curbing my disappointment.

I was a deer/faun this year. And I spent a few days and a few dollars crafting my leafy headband and my own ears. And then I took a day earlier in the week to test my makeup (if you follow my instagram @spellbound_nails you've already seen this test) so I'm very very happy with how I looked.

What did you or will you be getting up to this Halloween? Did you dress up? Leave me comments and/or pictures in the comments section below. ;)

As always, have a safe and haunting Halloween.
Until next time,
Ashley

*Post contains affiliate links. Purchases made via affiliate links provide small commissions to me but do not affect the purchaser's end of the transaction.

Happy Birthday To Me - Sale & Giveaway

Hello Lovelies!!! For those of you who don't know my birthday is November 3rd and I thought to myself what do I want for my birthday? Besides a new pair of boots and some jeans? Both of which I bought for myself ... how about a giveaway? And how about a big one day sale too??

Let's do the sale info first as it's a quick one. It's one day only - the day of my birthday from midnight to midnight. Use the code HAPPYDAY for 29% off your entire order on any of my sites. That's my main store plus Storenvy and Etsy :)

Now the giveaway!

The Prizes: 

A zebra print OPI makeup/nail polish bag, 2 packs of nail stickers, and a pack of Sally Hansen Gel Strips in Hooray Ombre (opened only for pictures).

Rimmel Lash Accelerator Mascara in black, Baby Lips Dr Rescue Medicated Balm in Pink Me Up, and a mustache necklace.

2 packs of Revlon 3D Jewel Appliques, L'Oreal True Match Crayon Concealer in Light/Medium (unopened but the tip does have a small amount of damage), and Maybelline Super Stay 24 2-Step Color lipgloss in Forever Chestnut.

*All items are brand new, never used. They were either purchased for this giveaway, given to me, or free gifts (usually with a purchase).

The Rules:

Giveaway starts 12:00am EST October 29th and ends 12:00am EST November 4th. Giveaway is open worldwide - however it is up to you to check your own country's customs requirements. I take no responsibility if your package is destroyed by customs.

Once the winner is contacted, they will have 24 hours to reply and claim their prize. If they do not reply within that time period, a new winner will be chosen.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Barielle Nail Polish Remover Towelettes Review and Video

*Some products were sent to me for testing and review, completely complimentary, from Barielle. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Hello lovelies! This post has been a while in coming - almost a month to be exact. Some of you will remember the maple leaf nails I did with the Barielle polishes I received from the company. Well, I also received a tub of their Love Your Nails Acetone-Free Nail Polish Remover Towelettes to try. I actually used them to remove said maple leaf nails but my phone ran out of space while I was trying to record it.

Retail Price: $10.00

It took me a while but I finally gave it another try with some candy corn gradient nails I've been wearing since vacation ... almost 2 weeks ago. I'm a horrible, horrible nail artist.

So, honest opinions. These wipes aren't horrible! YAY!! The small size really does make it easy to tuck them into a purse or suitcase with no risk of a cap coming off and spilling nail polish remover all over your clothes or god forbid your electronics during a trip. It's a horror story we either tell or hear about all the time so this more than anything else gets my thumbs up! 

I haven't counted but the tub states it has 25 towelettes. I found one wipe removed my polish from all 10 nails but I needed a second wipe to do a thorough clean up of stubborn polish and even more stubborn base coat ... so each tub is good for about 12 manis for me.

And on the subject of cleanup it was seriously a breeze! I haven't tried these wipes with chunky glitter yet but it removed shimmer polishes and dark polishes really well and quickly too. You'll see this in the video. What you won't be able to know from the video is the scent of these wipes. So much better than nail polish remover! Their website says it's a citrus scent and I was a little scared because I'm not a fan of citrus scents. I usually find citrus too cloying, but all I get from these is a light citrus/berry scent that's actually really nice.

Let's all ignore the fact that my nails need filed and shaped.
That comes after this post. ;)

The above picture was taken after wipe one but before the thorough clean of wipe two. You can see my index finger has some stubborn base coat and my middle finger has some stubborn polish clinging to the tip. That said, this would be fine if I was rushing out the door. Quick and easy and nearly completely clean ... you really can't ask for much more in a hurry!

And any worry about drying out my nails was put to rest as soon as I started removing the polish. These towelettes have an almost lotion-like residue that you can see in the picture. Honesty again ... I wasn't sure I liked it at first. It felt really different to liquid nail polish remover and different is always met with resistance lol. But after using the wipes I noticed that my fingers were amazingly soft with no dried out feeling that liquid removers (even the best non-acetone remover I've tried) give me and best of all it did wonderful things for my cuticles! It really reminds me of the Essie cuticle oil pen I have and love but with the Barielle towelettes it gets all over your hands without any extra work. It was like skipping a step in my nail care routine without giving up any of the benefits!

The only downside I can find is the price tag. $10.00 is a little out of my price range for everyday use, but these are definitely a must have for any lengthy trip. That said, Barielle has a 4oz bottle of a liquid acetone-free remover for the same price. I might splurge and buy myself some for my birthday on the 3rd to see if it's just as good as the wipes. If I do, I'll definitely let you know!

Check out the video and see the magic in action for yourself. Remember that I've been wearing this polish for almost 2 weeks so if you're squeamish about chips and nail polish growing out it's best to turn away and not watch. *cringe*

So, what do you think? Let me know your thoughts and comments in the box below. ;)

Until next time,

Ashley

*Some products were sent to me for testing and review, completely complimentary, from Barielle. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Haunted Nighttime Nail Art

Hello lovelies! I'm excited to bring you my very first Halloween mani. I did this one for the 1st and I'm sad to say I only managed to get one good pic and it's not completely color accurate. :(

I started with a base of Crisp Morning Air from my 2014 Fall Collection and used an eyeshadow applicator to dab a few splotches of Autumn Sunset. Autumn Sunset is a gorgeous purple polish with a blue shift and that just doesn't show here. It created such an amazing nightime-y effect for this creepy Halloween scene. :( If you're like my mom and you just don't see it ... my index nail has a spindly tree, bats on my middle finger, a haunted mansion on my ring, and a graveyard on my pinky finger with Happy Halloween written on my thumb complete with a raven perched on it. :)

I topped the sponged base with a coat of Seche Vite top coat and once the whole thing was completely dry I used some homemade Halloween vinyls to create the designs. Unlike my maple leaf nail art I used the outlines of the images this time and dabbed them with black. I apologize for the horrible camera quality pic but this is what I'm talking about when I say outline. I simply dabbed black into the outline and peeled the vinyl off leaving behind a perfect design ... so much easier and less time consuming than trying to hand paint everything. A time and place for everything, right? Be sure to get into the edges of the outline though for nice clean and crisp lines.

And for the thumb I simply used the vinyl image itself, sticking it to my nail and painting over it with two coats of top coat to smooth it all out.

If you want to see these colors as close to accurate as I think pictures can possibly capture head over to Painted Nubbs' blog post on the 2014 Fall Collection. She has some truly stunning swatches.

What kind of nail art are you most looking forward to seeing or trying this Halloween? Let me know in the comments. ;)

Until next time,
Ashley