Consider the most noteworthy pop-culture moments and current events of any given year, and you can pretty much predict what the most popular Halloween costumes will be. While 2016 saw Harley Quinn (thanks, Suicide Squad) and unicorns dominate, the clusterfuck that is 2017 offers no shortage of inspiration from every corner of the news cycle: We should expect to see plenty of Offred and her contemporaries from The Handmaid's Tale, Wonder Woman, It's murderous clown Pennywise, and any and all things Game of Thrones or American politics. (They're really not that different, when you think about it.)
Yes, it's been quite a year, and we're already seeing costumes that reflect that. But when it comes to striking just the right note between the appropriately timely and the truly surprising (as in, not a Jon Snow-Daenerys Targaryen couple's costume or anyone from the cast of Stranger Things), we think we've found a winner.
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT
Masterfully created by YouTube vlogger Natasha Lee, exploding-zit nail art combines the art of the Halloween gross-out with the trending appeal of the Dr. Pimple Popper craze. Lee's ten-minute tutorial shows how she layers on various nail products to mimic the bumpy, broken-out effect, and how she uses hand cream so that, when squeezed, the "zits" actually "pop." The final result is unsettlingly realistic — like, you know it's just a lot of nail polish and some hand cream, but that doesn't mean it's any less gag-inducing than the real thing.
According to Lee, who rates the difficulty of the tutorial as a three out of five, it'll take the intermediate nail artist around 40-50 minutes to pull off. So if you have a flair for nail art and no plans for Halloween night aside from opening the front door every time a trick-or-treater knocks, this might be all you need to get in on the Halloween spirit and startle the neighborhood children without even changing out of your pajamas. Huge pus-filled pimples are much better on your nails than on your face.
Related Video:
edited by Nicola Pardy.