I swear, it happens every year - I fall back in love with gradients in the springtime. Now, this may be because I like the look of pastel or muted gradients better than the more saturated shades that I tend to reach for the rest of the year. Actually, now that I think about it, that's almost certainly why I tend to do so many gradients in the springtime. Anyway, I always forget how much I love doing them and how quick and easy they really are when you're using the right products and have the technique down, but now that I'm back into the swing you can expect some more gradients popping up here on the blog in coming weeks!

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Like I said, one of the components for a great gradient is the right polishes that blend smoothly and easily when you sponge them on, and when it comes to pastel gradients I always head back to Color Club and they never, ever let me down. (Honestly, I have a huge collection of Color Club polishes and they are definitely one of my favorite brands to use for nail art bases such as gradients and smooshes.) For this mani, I wanted my gradient to move from peach to blue, so I decided to do four shade gradient to get a smooth, balanced blend. 

For this mani, I started with one coat of the blue shade on all of my nails as the base. Generally I would start with the shade nearest the cuticle to make for the easiest clean up, but in this case I actually changed my mind about the direction I was going to place the gradient between applying that base and actually sponging on the gradient so I just went with it. Next, I did three passes of sponging on each nail to build up the gradient to the opacity and blend I was looking for.

I also decided to apply a flakie topper at this point both to smooth the base and add a little bit of interest. I went with Starrily's Unicorn, one of my favorite flakie toppers, because it has a full rainbow of iridescent multichrome flakes that I really felt like would add just the right amount of interest over this pastel base.  

The stamping vibe I wanted to go for on this mani was a playful decorated easter egg type of design - like so many of us used to do when we were kids. I decided to go with this really fun, almost hand drawn looking image from the Whats Up Nails B045 Sprung On Spring Stamping Plate. I went with white stamping polish because it gives strong contrast while still feeling really soft (and like what you would get with the wax technique on Easter eggs) and I alternated the direction of my stamping placement to give some added visual interest. Simple, right?

Once I was happy with my stamping, I sealed it in with a nail art top coat. I actually had every intention of mattifying this mani (eggshell and all that...) but it just looked so pretty glossy that I couldn't bring myself to do it and I ended up finishing with a layer of quick dry glossy top coat for shine. And voila!

I honestly feel like this gradient just screams Easter and it totally makes me want to actually try to make some Easter eggs to match it - one of those rare times when I do sort of wish I had kids so I had an excuse, but I could also just do it, right? Anyway... 

Be sure to head over to Cosmetic Proof and See The World In PINK for more Pastel themed nail art designs for #CBBxManiMonday! And if you aren't already, be sure to follow me over at @pblnails on Instagram to keep up on all of my nail designs and for video tutorials for all of the mani's that I post here on the blog!

Thanks for reading!