THIS POST IS IN PARTNERSHIP WITH PUEEN COSMETICS. 

When I started thinking about nail art designs for the back half of summer, now that neon doesn't feel quite like the move to me as I stand in anticipation of fall like the very basic white girl I happen to be, one thing that stuck out for me was nature. I was just very drawn to the idea of putting together nail designs based on a nature theme for some reason. And, for me, on those rare occasions that I spend time out in nature (I am definitely an inside kid), one of my favorite things is looking up at the night sky, unimpeded by the lights of the city. And all of this is to say, today's mani is all about that starry, starry sky. 

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For the base for my stamping, I knew exactly what polish I wanted to reach for to do this mani, and that is Whats Up Nails' Night Contrails*, which is this gorgeous blue magnetic polish that gives the most gorgeous pop of bright blue and green. Like most metallic polishes, photos do it absolutely no justice, but I do think the macro below does a pretty good job of showing it off - for a picture, anyway. 

I applied two coats of Night Contrails to all of my nails, using a traditional bar magnet with each coat to get a diagonal flash through the center(ish) of the nail. 

For the stamping, I ended up going with two different stamping plates from Pueen that feature very similar 4 pointed stars. I did this because I wanted little clusters on some nails and full cover on the other and I just liked the positioning of the stars for the clusters better on the second plate than on the first so I went with it. I actually don't often reach for multiple plates for one mani... but I'm beginning ot think that perhaps I should.

I applied the images using a white stamping polish to get a really strong contrast. For my thumb, middle and pinkie, I applied the full cover image, shifting and flipping the placement to get a different look on each nail. For my pointer and ring fingers, I used the second plate and chose smaller clusters, applying them sort of randomly on the nail. 

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

Not even gonna lie, I'm pretty in love with how this mani turned out. The combination of that stunning base polish with the really crisp white star stamping just came together even better than I was expecting it to. I have to say, I just really, really love these little clusters of stars. It makes me wanna try out a bit more galaxy style stamping. Hmmmm....

If you're interested in any of the Pueen products that I used for this mani, they're all available from Amazon and they do all get my stamp of approval. 

Thanks for reading!