THIS POST IS IN PARTNERSHIP WITH PUEEN COSMETICS.

I have to tell you, when I sat down to to today's mani I didn't feel entirely confident that it was going to work out, but I had a picture in my head and the products to create it so I figured it was worth a try and I have to tell you.. it went above and beyond what I could have hoped for. One of my favorite types of gradients is a thee color rainbow gradient because if you use the right polishes for the gradient you really do end up getting nearly a full spectrum of rainbow colors. Though this isn't technically a Pride mani, I think the pairing of the rainbow with the hearts works pretty well for the entire vibe of June. 

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I don't generally use stamping polishes for anything other than stamping, but I was looking at the three Pueen Stamping Polishes that I used for this mani and I couldn't help but want to see how it would go on the nails so I just decided to give it a try. I started this mani by applying a nearly white pastel blue polish to all of my nails as a base. I do this in place of white because.. well, I just hate working with white polishes and this very pale pastel option works beautifully with a less chalky formula. Once that base was dry - always make sure your base is dry or it will lift when you do your sponging - I went in with my latex cuticle barrier to make clean up a little easier.

For the gradient, I applied stripes of Pueen's Bright Yellow*, Baby Blue*, and Sweet Pink* stamping polishes to a triangle makeup sponge. In order to maintain a balanced gradient, I made sure to apply each stripe of polish at the same width so that none of the colors took over. Next I just pounced the makeup sponge onto my nails a few times to apply and gently blend the polish. Even on that first pass, I was amazed at how beautiful these polishes worked to create the gradient and I ended up needing only two passes to get a really opaque and beautifully blended gradient on the nails. 

Before I went in with my stamping, I decided to add a rainbow flakie topper to the design to smooth out the gradient a little bit. Because stamping polish is a little bit thicker than regular polish, I did have a little bit of texture on the nails but one coat of my flakie topper smoothed it out perfectly for my stamping. For the stamping, I used the Pueen Nail Party 03 Stamping Plate* which seriously has so many gorgeous images but I knew I needed to use this scattered heart one. Using a white stamping polish, I alternated the direction I placed the image across the mani just to break up the design a bit and add more visual interest.

Once I was happy with my design, I sealed it in with a nail art top coat and then followed with a generous layer of quick dry glossy top coat. And voila!

Honestly, I am so impressed with how this turned out and it has me over here wanting to try some more gradient designs using stamping polish because it just built and blended so quickly and flawlessly. Honestly, this mani should not have been this easy. 

If you're interested in the Pueen Cosmetics products that I used for this mani, they're all available over on Amazon and I would happily recommend every single one of them. If you want to see the products in action, head over to @pblnails on Instagram and check out my video tutorial!

Thanks for reading!