Halloween Nail Art: Get KAWS-Inspired Love & Death Nails

When it comes to Halloween nail art, we either like to go all in with pumpkins and ghosts, or get just a touch spooky by playing with grays, blacks and the like. Basically, any excuse to get dark and dreary with our color schemes is always a fun change of pace. This season, we called on nail extraordinaire Miss Pop to show us how to get a variety of different nail looks for Halloween. This week, she took inspiration from the artist KAWS, known for his acrylic paintings and sculpture works, and most recently his take on the VMA’s Moon Man.

For Halloween, we combined the theme of “love” and “death” with a KAWS spin, creating cute skulls and hearts on nails. Follow the tips above from Miss Pop to get the look yourself – a look that we think can really be rocked any time of the year, but will be perfect as we get closer to October 31st.

Step 1: Apply a base coat.

Step 2: Apply two coats of a gray shade of polish on all of your fingers except for the pointer finger. Miss Pop likes to use Essie’s Master Plan. Then, paint your pointer fingers with two coats of a […]

Step 3: Drop a large spot of your gray polish on each of your black nails.

Step 4: Using a striper brush, lightly drag four lines from the bottom of your large dot.

Step 5: On your ring finger, use a small dotter to paint two small dots side by side, using a red polish. Miss Pop loves using Dior Rouge in 999 for this.

Step 6: Then, using a striper brush drag out a thin line from those dots to create a KAWS-inspired heart.

Step 7: Next, take a darker shade of gray (Miss Pop prefers Dior 707) and add two smaller dots with your dotter to each upper side of your skull. Add one final tiny dot to connect your cluster for the […]

Step 8: Take a very small detail brush (or a toothpick) to paint an “X” for the eyes on both the skulls and the hearts.

Step 9: If you’d like, use your darker gray polish to draw half moons on your remaining nails with your striper brush.

Step 10: Then, dip your striper brush into black polish and trace an “X” over your half moons.

Step 11: Finish with a top coat and enjoy your KAWS-inspired love and death nails!