I swear, there's a thing in my brain that shuts down and doesn't allow me to do bold, bright, intricate nail art when what I really need is something soft and simple to reset my brain. Anyone else have those palette cleanser moments where you just need to keep it soft? When I sat down to do this mani, I had some other, more bold and intense and theme-y nail designs in mind and I even tried a few of them before accepting that I just needed a wee break to try something softer and then... this just sort of happened. 

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If you're in need of a sheer baby pink polish, which I think everyone can probably use in their nail collection for work appropriate looks or bridal nails or really whatever, I highly recommend Baby, Take A Vow from OPI. It's just a sort of perfect pale pink sheer, if you ask me. I don't think you could build this one up to opacity without it getting real heavy on the nails, if at all, so this definitely isn't the right choice if you're looking for a sheer that you can build to full coverage. This is a sheer that stays sheer. It also has a genuinely beautiful formula with a smooth, even, non-streaky application that I love. Have I sung the praises of this polish enough yet? Seriously, this is my favorite milky pink sheer ever.

For this mani, I wanted to create that sort of opalescent, iridescent from within look, so I sandwiched one coat of Holo Taco Solar Unicorn Skin between two coats of Baby Take A Vow and I'm pretty much obsessed with what it did. Again, this was definitely sheer so if I hadn't have added the stamping at the tip you would be able to see really visible nail line, but the combination of the sheer polish and the flakie had a really good camouflaging effect that made my naked nails look really, really nice. Easily, I could have stopped just with that but... I'm me, so I didn't.

Honestly, I had no idea what I was going to do stamping wise until I was actually doing it. There's this sort of wavelength image on the Nicole Diary 146 Stamping Plate that I felt like I could play with a little bit. The way I ended up using it was to apply part of the image to the nail and then turn the stamper and apply the rest at an opposing angle. Then, because I felt like I needed some more contrast, I went in with this image that's sort of a circle of dots and just applied it to a corner at the tip of each nail for just a little something. 

Once I was happy with my stamping, I sealed it in with a water based top coat and finished with a generous layer of glossy top coat for shine. And voila!

I can't even begin to tell you how obsessed I am with this base pairing. I really feel like it's the perfect pairing for an opal look - and it's so simple and easy to apply that it just makes it extra stunning. I'm also really happy with how the stamping turned out, especially since it was so much by the seat of my pants and that can be pretty hit or miss. It's a little bit different and maybe a little bit strange, but it did exactly what I was looking for it to do in a pretty modern sort of way.

Thanks for reading!