Sometimes when I do too much nail art in a theme, the creative part of me just starts wanting to fully rebel against all things... that and go in a completely different direction. I feel like lately I've been so focused on being theme-y for fall and also thinking about the holiday season coming up that it's really no surprise that I finally just had to go in the complete opposite direction of everything else I've been doing lately with a sheer base, some really soft stamping polishes, and a fairly simple design. Full disclosure - I don't actually know if I love it, but I think I like it!

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Long time readers of the blog and followers of me over on Instagram @pblnails may have noticed that 2021 has had a lot more sheer bases for nail art than ever before on the blog. Seriously, before last year's Christmas nail art marathon, sheer bases for nail art were absolutely not my thing and then I fell in love. I feel like there's so much you can do with a sheer base that you can't do with an opaque one - and it doesn't hurt that you never have to worry about your design clashing or getting lost when your base is a neutral sheer. Anyway, this is why I recently picked up Cuticula's Neutralizer Base Coat, which is a lilac tinted sheer base coat that can be worn in one coat to neutralize staining on the nails or in two coats for a more milky sheer look. 

For this mani, I applied one more generous coat to all of my nails and let it dry completely. I find that the look this ended up giving me is an almost acrylic look on the nails, especially after I mattified it at the end. For me, I think of this like a tinted moisturizer - it doesn't provide coverage, really, but it does make everything a little smoother and more even looking. 

I actually had the idea to layer these two stamping images in a much different overall vibe, but I got it in my head that it could be a kind of cool and unique sort of vibe to go for soft, muted, slightly girly sorts of colors and pair them with this distinctly grunge vibe. I decided to go with this pale pink that is basically just my skin tone as the first layer and then I paired it with this really smoky mauve taupe shade that I think adds a little bit of depth and contrast while still being really soft. As I tend to, I played around with the direction that I placed my stamping so that the only nails that are the same are my pinkie and thumb.

Once I was happy with the design, I crisped up my cuticles with a clean up brush and then sealed in the design with a nail art top coat. I decided to go matte to really stick with the grunge vibe, so I finished with a matte top coat and voila!

As I said, I'm not sure this is a full on winner for me, but I do like it and I do really like that it sort of turns on its head everything that I tend to expect from grunge types of designs. That's definitely one thing that I've been enjoying when it comes to sheer bases as well - you can play with saturation in a way that I think just hits different than when you're using opaque bases. Anyway, yeah, I feel like I might try this exact same design with really rich, fully saturated colors at some time in the future to see the difference. Maybe in 2022, since it's about to Christmas o'clock here on the blog.

Thanks for reading!