I have to admit, I'm currently in my annual nail art inspo slump. It always happens after the holiday season when I'm sapped both from all of the life living that happens at this time of year but also from having put so much of my creative energy into cranking out holiday mani's. I will admit to a few distinctly failed designs before I landed on this one, which was sort of like a lightbulb and has definitely ignited some fresh inspiration in me!

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Today's mani is another recreation of one of my personal favorite designs that I did last year - but this time around I went with a much more traditionally Christmas color story and I think it might have turned out even better than the first time. Even though I tend to convince myself that reverse stamping is going to be complicated and take a lot time, it almost never does. That said, this mani also utilized some layered stamping, which I'm still getting the hang of if I'm being honest, and that really does make the whole process go a lot more smoothly.

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As I was looking through my stamping plates to come up with Halloween nail art ideas, I found myself particularly drawn to the Manitude x Pretty Creepy Stamping Plate. There's just something particularly enjoyable about the images on this plate and I feel like the possibilities for what you could create with it are sort of endless. I think, in the end, the inspiration for this came from the little bows with skulls at the center - it felt sort of playful, like a teenage goth romance, so that's the direction I took it in. Leaning into my early to mid 2000s emo girl hard.

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MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYONE! For my last holiday themed nail art design, I decided to go all in with a festive Christmas-y color palette and some really pretty ornament stamping with a bit of sparkle. I'm so thrilled with how this marathon of holiday and winter themed nail art has gone and I'm really happy to end it here with this mani. For those of you who have been here with me every step of the way, thank you so much and I hope you have or have had a wonderful holiday season, whatever you celebrate or don't. 

Without further ado, let's get to these nails!

A couple of years ago, I put together this mani and it immediately became and has continued to be one of my favorite nail art designs that I've ever done and the design of it is actually one that I've used for a bunch of different occasions since then. Of course, since it's still my favorite I feel inclined to do some version of it every year - though I do try to be sure that I change it up at least a little. This year, I decided to go for a red tip to give a very distinctly Christmasiness to it and I'm pretty in love (and also a little bit devastated, but we'll get into that in a minute...)

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Admittedly, when I sat down and started thinking about which polishes I wanted to bust out for Halloween nails, the ones I used to create this mani didn't even come close to entering my mind. It actually wasn't until I saw this mani from Ash @ashxmcgrath on Instagram that I absolutely had to create my own version of it. I mean... I was immediately in love with the design and I loved the really frothy pink color palette. Of course, the original mani was hand painted, as all of her gorgeous work is, and I am absolute trash at hand painting - but luckily I had the perfect stamping plate to use to make my own version of this design!

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I have been so, so impressed with the quality and performance of the Kokie Cosmetics polishes that I've tried so far, so I was really curious when I saw that they were releasing a new range of plant based polishes how they would hold up. They were kind enough to send over 6 shades from their Green Polish range and I was really eager to try them out on my nails - and was overall really impressed with their performance.

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Continuing on with an entire week dedicated to cactus themed nails, I kept this one nice and soft and generally pretty simple. This was sort of loosely inspired by this design from Sveta Sanders, though I feel like I made it my own with a different technique and vibe overall. I LOVE that mani though - honestly, who doesn't love pretty much all of her work? ANYWAY. As I said, I wanted to keep this one nice and soft with one of my absolute favorite color pairings - purple and green. 

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I love watermelon nails - they really are a fun summer twist on a French, in my opinion - and I did a very similar mani to this one last year as well but I couldn't resist busting out the design again this summer. I personally really like a twist on a classic French  mani because I think it makes the whole vibe a little bit more fun overall, and I think it works really seamlessly with a watermelon design because you have that built in shape.  

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The intensity of the summer nail art can be a little bit much after a while - and doing three mani's a week for the blog can be a little bit overwhelming when they're all bright and very much themed - so eventually you just need a bit of a palette cleanser. I recently got this absolutely beautiful, soft pink base that I knew would be the perfect shade to just... exhale with, and when the inspiration for this mani came I knew I had to try it out. Sometimes that's just how it works in my brain, I will admit.

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In nail polish lover circles, you'll often hear about palette cleanser types of polishes - those soft polishes that just give you a minute to breathe after the more intense, unique and in your face polishes that tend to get us all excited. For me, since I'm always more interested in having nail art than just polish on my nails, my palette cleanser is actually a design style that I know followers of this blog will be pretty familiar with at this point. I needed a little bit of a breather and a reset for my creativity, so I grabbed a few new-to-me polishes from Kokie Professional Nail Polish* and just went for it in what I would probably call my signature design - and I kept it super simple without any additions that require more than bottles of polish, so this is a look that just about anyone can easily recreate. 

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Hey guys! I hope everyone had a great weekend - I personally had a straight up meltdown with worry about my dog's health, so I will admit that this week's floral themed #CBBxManiMonday was a little bit thrown together at the last minute while I enjoyed a vodka soda and a rewatch of Ever After on Disney+ after getting some very relieving news from the vet... as you do. I feel like, for times like these where you want to do nail art but are running low on time and creativity, the rise of the blobby abstract nails trend is an absolute winner. You just kind of... slap it on and go. And because I'm me, of course, I added some floral stamping for good measure. 

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Once I was finished swatching the 6 shades of the Kokie Professional Nail Polish* that they sent over for me to share with you guys, I really wanted to put together some nail art using a few of them, and I had a few ideas that I rolled around before landing on this one that just stuck in my head. Though I've seen people do this particular sponging technique before, I'm pretty sure that I had never tried it myself - and now I find that I have been remiss because I love it so much!

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I've been curious about Kokie Cosmetics for a while now, so I was SUPER stoked to hear that their nail polishes were going to finally be available here in Canada at Sally Beauty and I was definitely in when I got a chance to try out some of the shades for myself. It's always exciting to me when new formulas of nail polish, especially ones that live in the under $10 a bottle range, become available in stores locally. I only have 6 shades to share with you guys today, but there are definitely some different finishes in this bunch, and I definitely hope to share more in the future.

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