One of the cool things about stamping for nail art is that a little bit of creativity in the way that you use different stamping images can go a really, really long way. There are a few artists whose work always blows my mind in the way that they use stamping in ways that hadn't even occurred to me. When I sat down to do today's mani, I went in with the idea that I wanted to keep it fairly simple, perhaps even minimalist, and I wanted to reach for one of the new plates in my collection that I hadn't gotten the chance to use yet. I wasn't until I was sitting there staring at three plates that still had their blue film on them that inspiration struck and I decided to use two really simple stamping images in a way I'd never thought of to create a mani that I think turned out pretty great. 

I've noticed a bit of a weird thing that my brain does as I've been going through this marathon of Christmas nail art. It's really not surprising, I'm pretty neurodivergent and my brain works in a pretty specific ways, but it hadn't really occurred to me. Logically I know that I like doing reverse stamped nail designs and they're always worth the work, but I tend to talk myself out of them and convince myself that they're hard and way too much work and overwhelming. I had to push through that for the Cute & Cozy Hot Cocoa & Coffee Nails that I posted earlier this month using this same stamping plate and I had to do it again for this one - and it was so very much worth it both times!

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Today's mani is a birthday collaboration mani for Sky of skys.nails on Instagram - and it's a little bit of birthday inception for this one because I chose this mani, which was inspired by another artist for their birthday. I've actually been wanting to try out one of these blobby abstract designs for a while now, but like so many other things I've never tried before I had a bit of an intimidation block that this luckily helped me get past somewhat. Also, I did put a little bit of my own spin on it, as I tend to always do when I'm working from another artist as inspiration. 

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I have a little story about the polish that I'm featuring today. I was actually looking online at Shoppers Drug Mart at the shades in the new(ish) Quo XTREME FX Nail Color line and I saw the little blob of what the shade Happy Go Lucky was supposed to look like and immediately got heart eyes and decided to run out to the store later that day to gets my hands on it. Now, initially, standing in front of the display I was convinced that they didn't have it, but then I saw the little tag and realized that this was the shade I was looking for - it had looked a little deeper and more ashy online. Initially I was a little bit disappointed, but then I picked up the bottle and shifted it in the light a little bit and I was pretty sold on giving it a try. 

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