Today's mani is a birthday collaboration mani for Sky of skys.nails on Instagram - and it's a little bit of birthday inception for this one because I chose this mani, which was inspired by another artist for their birthday. I've actually been wanting to try out one of these blobby abstract designs for a while now, but like so many other things I've never tried before I had a bit of an intimidation block that this luckily helped me get past somewhat. Also, I did put a little bit of my own spin on it, as I tend to always do when I'm working from another artist as inspiration. 

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It is no secret to regular readers of this blog that I am not a fan of a white créme base for a mani - I'll do it occasionally, but I tend to avoid - so for this mani I decided to go with a white sheer base instead of the opaque white of the inspiration mani. One of my personal favorite sheers is Essie's Sheer Luck, which is one of those almost-white-but-ever-so-slightly-pink shades and it has a realy subtle, fine shimmer through it that I think does a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to camoflaging the natural nail while still being sheer. If you're looking for a really good drugstore sheer that is very neutral and nearly white, I do highly recommend this one. 

For this mani, I applied two coats of Sheer Luck as my base and let them dry down completely before moving onto the nail art.

While the greens from the inspiration mani definitely have more of a yellow undertone them, I decided to go with cooler, more blue toned greens that live a little bit more in the turquoise/teal family. I ended up choosing five different shades to get a good mixture of different shades within that family as well as one with a subtle shimmer through it for some texture. To apply the little blobbies, I used a dotting tool and just kept them free form and tried not to be too precious about their shapes. I think that's the trick for this kind of look because if you get too concerned with perfection or even really just overthink it, this kind of look with lose some of that effortlessness and end up feeling overworked.

For the stamping, I reached for the Uberchic Beauty Boho Chic stamping plate because it had a good selection of different feathers so that I could use a different one for each nail. I chose which feather I would apply to which nail based on the size of the image relative to the size of my nail and stamped them in black, adjusting the placement and direction of the feathers to give a unique look to each nail. I also added some random dots to each nail to really add some more interest to the overall look. 

Once I was happy with the design, I sealed everything in with a nail art top coat and then finished with a generous layer of matte top coat to take down that shine and ground the whole look. And voila!

Gotta say, friends, I really like this blobbity abstract technique and I'm so glad that Sky's birthday gave me the chance to try it out finally - I will definitely be bringing this one out again more in the future, so keep an eye out. Be sure to head over to my Instagram post and check out #SkittlesForSkyBirthdayCollab to see all of the mani's that everyone did for this occasion.

Thanks for reading!