I must admit, I've been functioning in a bit of an inspiration deficit at the moment, so I've been looking to other artists for inspiration. Whether it's on Instagram or Pinterest, I find that there is just so much beautiful nail art out there that can really spark my own creativity to jump into action. With today's mani, I saw a few different designs that had sort of blobs of color combined with sort of loosey goosey line work - that's the best description I could think of - and it inspired me to come up with this pastel neon rainbow mani (clearly it's June now and June is rainbow o'clock) that I'm sort of in love with at the moment.

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I'm having a bit of a moment with milky sheer bases right now, so no one will be surprised that I decided to grab for another one to create the base for this mani. Essie's Treat Me Bright is a milky sheer white base with a really fine iridescent shimmer through it from their Treat, Love, Color range and it's gorgeous. Admittedly, I've had this polish in my collection for ages and never really reached for it because I wasn't a fan of a milky sheer, but now that my thoughts on these types of polishes have changed I suspect it'll get a lot more play. 

I decided after applying two coats of Treat Me Bright to all of my nails that I wanted to add a flakie topper for some texture and interest, so I grabbed for Solar Unicorn Skin from Holo Taco because I find that the tones of it work really well with these sort of pastel neon types of shades. I applied one coat of Solar to all of my nails and let them dry down. 

For the blobs of color at the tips of my nails, I knew I wanted to go with pastel neons in a rainbow order, so I went directly to the Color Club drawer to bust out some of my favorites. I grabbed a turquoise, a blue, a purple, a pink, and an orangey coral that I felt would really create a pretty spectrum on the nails. I then just went in and applied blobs of each color, two per nail, in rainbow order to the tips of my nails. I didn't want to be too precious about this, so I just applied straight from the bottle and tried to keep the width of each blob close to even. Honestly, with a technique like this I think the worst thing you can do is overwork and overthink it. It works out best when you just sort of go for it and blob it on there.

For the stamping, I went with this really sort of free form image from the KADS Fashion 091 stamping plate. This image is very, very much in line with what's on trend right now and I also think it worked really well with this design because it adds some movement to the overall design that makes those blobs look a little bit more intentional, if that makes sense. I applied the same image to all of my nails, turning it slightly in application so that it looked a little bit different across the nails.

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

I think I sometimes forget just how much I love a pastel neon polish and particularly the way they can perform in a sort of rainbow, especially at full opacity. I really love this design and I think it's such a fun way to transition from spring into summer. Really happy with how this one turned out!

If you wanna see how I did this mani, head over to @pblnails on Instagram to check out the video tutorial and follow me to keep up on all of my nail art.

Thanks for reading!