I don't know what it is about summer for me, but I seem to have two moods when it comes to nails - bright and neon and completely on the nose, which isn't surprising at all, but then also I have a thing for a little bit darker and moodier? When I sat down to do this mani, I knew exactly what base polish I wanted to use and had absolutely no idea whatsoever what I was going to do with it - literally, I didn't have a single idea. But after sort of rooting around in my stamping plates, it started to come together and in the end I'm a wee bit obsessed.

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Starrily's Dark Music** is one of those multichrome polishes that you could just shift around and stare at in the bottle for hours. The dominant color is definitely this really rich navy blue shade followed closely by a rich purple, but at angles it has that straight up rich oil slick type of vibe to it that is impossible to capture in photos on the nails. The shift is super intense, moving through pink and orange all the way to a sort of olivey gold right at the edges. I will fully admit that I spent a silly amount of time leaning back in the chair at my nail desk to pull my hands out of my filming light to really capture the shift. It's also, unsurprisingly, a beautiful, pigmented and super dreamy to work with polish - which is what always impresses me about Starrily polishes.

For this mani, I applied two coats of Dark Music to all of my nails and let them dry down completely. 

For the stamping, I definitely wanted to lean into the sort of galaxy vibe that I was getting from that base polish, but I didn't want to go too on the nose with a white or silver stamping polish because I always feel like that can end up being too stark. Ultimately, I decided to do some gradient stamping using really bright pink, purple and blue créme finish stamping polishes from Whats Up Nails (my favorite stamping polishes, in case you were wondering.) I also went with this sort of wavy stars image that is a little bit nebulous in theme but really gives a nice movement and flow to the mani. Like I tend to do, I alternated the direction of the image (and as a result the direction of the gradient), which I think really particularly worked with this mani to give a cohesive flow across the whole hand.

Once I was happy with my stamping, I sealed it in with a water based top coat and then finished with a generous layer of a quick dry glossy top coat and voila!

Seriously, if you're a fan of darker polishes or really beautiful multichromes, I highly recommend checking out Dark Music from Starrily**, it's just an absolutely beautiful polish in a way that I really wish that I could capture in photos for you guys. Trust me, though, the shift in person is super pretty. As I said above, this polish was gifted to me from NailStuff.ca - a phenomenal Canadian resource for Starrily polishes as well as some other great brands - and you can feel free to use affiliate code TRYSH for 10% off your first order!

Thanks so much for reading!