Every year since I started doing Halloween nail art, I've done some version of bats stamped over a gradient. It's honestly one of my favorite designs and I feel like there's no limit to how many completely different versions of this design you can put together. This year, I decided that I wanted to do something a little different from previous years, so I put together a pastel rainbow gradient as my base and I'm obsessed!

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For our last week of Allyship nails for this month's #CBBxManiMonday theme, I sort of wanted to go all in. Obviously we chose this theme for June because of it being both Pride Month and Indigenous History Month here in Canada, but allyship is obviously so much bigger than that and so I decided to make this mani more about inclusivity and love overall. At the end of the day, every marginalized group experiences the world differently and has different needs that we need to listen to and value, and I find that leading with love and an acknowledgement of all people's personhood is fundamental to being a good ally. And so, that's what I had in mind when I did this mani - I hope it translates. 

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I have to say, I'm so excited to be getting into spring nails and finally doing some florals. Something about my brain keeps florals pretty much exclusively for spring, so I always wait until the weather is warm to get them on my nails. I'm also pretty intent on putting together some interesting bases again. I always get excited to play with smooshes or sponged on bases and all of the really fun things you can do to create texture and interesting base looks. Honestly, I'm just excited to get excited about nail art again, if that makes sense.

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My stamping plate collection has continued to grow and grow over the years and it's gotten to the point now where I definitely have some plates in my collection that I haven't gotten around to trying out yet and I really want to put in an effort to finally pull them out and use them this year. One of those plates is KADS Fashion 094, which is admittedly sort of a weird plate that I knew I wanted in my collection but I wasn't entirely sure how I was going to use. I finally pulled it out for this mani and I really couldn't be more thrilled about this first design that I created using it.

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One thing that I always find myself being mindful of when it comes to putting together Christmas/Holiday themed nail art is that I can't lean entirely on the color palette that we think of as traditionally seasonal. I mean, I love a red and green or icy blue mani as much as the next one, but I feel like great holiday nail art can also come in more non-traditional colors - especially if those colors have a distinctly cozy vibe to them. For today's mani, I leaned into taupe paired with black, white and champagne gold and I think it definitely brings the holiday vibe without being too on the nose. 

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Honestly, you guys, the degree to which I'm excited about today's nail art design is basically off the charts. I've had this mani in mind for ages now, but it fell victim to being one of the designs that my brain convinces me is going to be hard to do and so I should put it off... and then it never gets done. I don't know if this a neurodivergence thing, but it's definitely something that happens to me fairly often, and in the case of this one my brain was entirely lying to me. This is actually a really straightforward design that packs an absolute ton of impact and I'm sort of madly in love with it, if we're being honest. 

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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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After swatching the Bio Sculpture Live Life Loudly Collection* for Summer 2022, I was really excited to try and create some nail art using them. I generally try to hold off on the neons until at least June, but we're almost there and I didn't want to stifle the creativity so I just went for it. This is such a gorgeous neon collection and I suspect that it'll end up popping up here on the blog a lot in the next few months, but for the first mani I did using it, I had a very specific idea that I wasn't entirely sure I was going to love.. BUT I DID. 

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With today's mani, something pretty rare happened to bring it all together. Most often, I sit down with a simple mani in mind and then my goblin brain is like "MORE MORE MORE", but with this one I actually had a much more involved idea in mind but once I got to the point just before I ended up top coating this one, I realized that it was exactly where I wanted to leave it. There was just... something about it that I loved immediately - and I wanted to share it here on the blog because I feel like this type of mani could very easily be recreated regardless of your experience with nail art and since it was those types of manis that drew me into nail art because I felt confident I could do them, I like to share ideas and maybe inspire others to believe they can as well. 

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I am definitely having a moment with floral nails right now - partially because my mind and body are just fully and completely ready for spring (and maybe bracing in hopes that we don't end up with the kind of late season blizzard that isn't all that uncommon here in the beginning of April) and partially because I'm sort of in love with the new Whats Up Nails B074 A Flower A Day Stamping Plate*. It's such a great combination of Easter images (which will definitely pop up soon in Easter themed mani's) and really gorgeous floral images that I just love. Obviously I had to put together a spring mani featuring this really gorgeous daffodil image, right??

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Ever since I started doing Christmas nail art, back when I was just getting into nails and really had no idea what I was doing, I've loved sweater nails and I've done at least one or two versions of them every single year. This year, I will admit that the two I've done are a little bit more samey than I maybe intended, but I've found my favorite Fair Isle sweater style stamping image and nothing compares so it's the one I reach for. For today's mani, I changed it up a little bit from the Monochrome Green Fair Isle Sweater Nails from a couple of weeks ago, and I love love love how it turned out. 

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So the thing is... I know that spiderwebs are getting a LOT of play over the course of this month, but I really just can't seem to help myself. Not only so I just love them in general, but I also find them really versatile as far as creating different Halloween design. For today's mani, I kept it really simple and straightforward but also... real creepy and Halloween-y, if you ask me. Anyway, let's just get to the nails, shall we?

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If there's one thing that I try to keep in mind when I'm doing nail art, it's the impact of contrast and I always try to be mindful of when to increase and decrease it in a design to create the vibe that I'm looking for. For this mani, I decided to go all in. I not only wanted to have a really high contrast stamping design using crisp black and white, but I also wanted to create a sort of juxtaposition using a really bright base color along with it. I have a sneaking suspicion that this might be one of those ones that I absolutely love but doesn't do quite as well with with my followers, but I still love it either way. 

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I swear, there's a thing in my brain that shuts down and doesn't allow me to do bold, bright, intricate nail art when what I really need is something soft and simple to reset my brain. Anyone else have those palette cleanser moments where you just need to keep it soft? When I sat down to do this mani, I had some other, more bold and intense and theme-y nail designs in mind and I even tried a few of them before accepting that I just needed a wee break to try something softer and then... this just sort of happened. 

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There's something about summer and fruit themed nail art, I think. I've wanted to use the kiwi image from the Whats Up Nails B008 Summer Seeds Stamping Plate for ages now, but I hadn't gotten around to it and I wanted to use just the perfect green to get the look I wanted. I own a lot of green polishes, I really do absolutely love them, but I wanted to find just the right green to use for this mani and I recently found a beautiful, unique green in the drugstore that paired beautifully with a flakie topper to create the base for this mani. 

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I tend to rewatch things while I do my nails. Oftentimes it's those comfort TV shows that I've seen over and over, but other times it's old movies. Today's mani, I have to say, has a little bit of inspiration from the movie that I was watching while I was going it - although it probably isn't at all obvious. I LOVE the movie Under The Tuscan Sun. I've loved it ever since it came out and it's one of those ones that I turn on every once in a while just to brighten me up. The inspiration for this mani is certainly more in the carefree vibe of it than anything else - it certainly doesn't evoke the color scheme that I would have chosen if the inspiration had been a little more intention. That said, I had the idea for this gradient and I got it on my nails before I had any idea what I was going to do with the actual design and then the movie made me think of the Uberchic Beauty Boho Chic Stamping Plate and this is what happened. 

I like to keep polishes that are new or that I really want to use out on my nail desk so that when I'm trying to plan nail art I have them in my eyeline for inspiration. I actually wasn't planning on doing my nails when I did this mani, but I saw Holo Taco's Cats' Evasion and I had a bit of a lightbulb and had to get my idea onto my nails. I'd had this polish in my collection for a couple of months now, but I could never think of how I wanted to use it as a base until I had this idea so clearly I had to get it onto my nails ASAP.

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Have I spent months wanting to do bee nails and waiting for the right time? Yes. Yes, I have. This is one of those designs that I've been holding onto in the back of my mind, waiting for summer to get hot enough for the bees. (My brain works in a very, very specific way and I've learned to just accept it.) Anyway, it finally felt like it was time, so I dug around in my collection for a yellow nail polish that felt right and went to town with some favorite products in my collection and I'm kind of in love with the finished product. 

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Hey guys! It feels to me like 2021 is definitely shaping up to be the year of the abstract nail art for me - so many of my favorite designs this year are definitely slotted firmly into that category. When I sat down to do these nails, I will admit I was in a bit of a state and this was therapy for me, so I wanted to keep the colors soothing and the design simple and pleasing in its placement. My brain is... sometimes a very interesting place and how I place nail art designs is actually really, really specific to me. Neurodivergence, am I right?

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