Looking through all of the nail art I've done this summer, there isn't a lot of respite from the bright and I have to admit that I was feeling a little bit fatigued with all of that color so I decided to go for a design that's a little more muted and soft. Admittedly, a not insignificant portion of this design is inspired by The Golden Girls, which still holds up as one of my favorite TV shows of all time. When it comes to the aesthetic, there's something about that sort of washed out tropical Miami in the 80s vibe that just absolutely calls to me and that's what I sort of leaned into with this mani. 

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As I said above, I was looking for a sort of washed out vibe when it came to the color story for this mani, so I dug around in my drawers looking for the perfect base polish before I settled on Shale from Cirque Colors. This polish is described as a dusty lavender, but my bottle definitely feels like it sits firmly in the dusty rose category, and it's packed full of really beautiful irregular black speckles. I think what I love about these polishes is that they really make for a beautiful nail art base because they have that texture from the speckles, but it's really fine and soft so it doesn't ever overwhelm or take away from whatever you put on top of it. 

For this mani, I applied two coats of Shale to all of my nails and let them dry down before moving onto my stamping.

Going into this design, I knew that I wanted to start by applying a full cover image to all of my nails and then following with a single, higher contrast image to sort of give a printed textile kind of vibe overall using the KADS Nature 043 Stamping Plate. For the full cover image, I grabbed for a stamping polish that felt like a deeper, slightly more grey version of the base color so that it would show up but not really feel contrasting, if that makes sense. I used the same full cover image for all of my nails, alternating the direction of placement to break up the design somewhat. Next, I went in with single images from the same plate, which very much have the same vibe as the full cover image, and white stamping polish to apply one leafy image to each nail.

Once I was happy with the design, I sealed it in with a nail art top coat. Finally, to really bring out the muted sort of textile sort of design, I applied a matte top coat to all of my nails to bring down the shine and create a smooth finish. And voila!

Honestly, I feel like I did exactly what I set out out to do with this mani and I could absolutely see this pattern being like... a couch or a wallpaper in the the Golden Girls set. It also definitely hits the brief of being a little more of a softer and less in your face version of a summer mani.

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