It feels kind of weird to still be deep in fall nails while there's as much snow on the ground outside my window as there is, but I'm trying to hold off on transitioning into winter themed nails before Christmas nail art starts at the beginning of next month, so I'm sticking with fall. For this mani, I actually went in with a really, really clear idea of what I wanted and it was one of those rare times that it all worked out the way I hoped - Trust me, it's pretty rare that I go in with a really clear idea and end up actually doing it the way I thought I would.

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A few months ago, I picked up a set of these speckled eggshell polishes from Amazon. I'd had my eye on them for a while and I finally bit the bullet to pick them up, but I hadn't actually gotten around to using them in a mani until now. This particular polish is a really pale neutral beige that gives me sort of sugar cookie vibes, and has 3 different sizes of small matte black glitters in it, giving a really smooth, fully speckled finish. As always when I do gel polish, I started with a generous layer of peel off base coat that I let dry down completely before moving onto the gel polish. 

I did two layers of gel polish for this mani, curing for 60 seconds in my LED lamp after each coat. Once I was finished curing the second coat, I cleaned off the tacky layer to move on to the nail art. 

My plan for the nail art was to do two layers of leaves stamping from the Nicole Diary L14 Stamping Plate. For the first layer, I went in with a pale sort of saffron orange, a deeper more burnt orange, and a turmeric sort of yellow for the solid leaves images. To do this, I apply dots of each color sort of randomly over the image on the plate and then blend them gently with my scraper to get a sort of marbled look. I applied the same image to all of my nails using the same technique but varying the placement of the polish and slightly twisting the stamper when placing the image to get a different look on each nail. For the second layer, I applied single leaf images in black stamping polish and just sort of randomly placed them over the nail for a scattered vibe. 

Once I was happy with the design, I sealed it in with a water based top coat and then finished with a matte top coat to take down the shine for the vibe I was looking for. And voila!

I have to say, I really, really like how this turned out, and as tends to happen I feel like it will likely inspire me to reach for some of the gel polishes in my collection a little more often. For me, gel polish tends to serve a different purpose than regular polish, but I tend to forget that it actually makes a really quick and easy base as well - no waiting for polish to dry between coats, just 30-60 seconds in the lamp. Love it.

Be sure to head over to @pblnails on Instagram and follow me there for video tutorials of all of my nail art designs!

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