Soooo... today's mani was inspired by a mani that I saw on Instagram and I can't remember the artist and it's driving me crazy to not give credit. But yeah, these were inspired by another artist who did something similar to this in softer tones. I had recently gotten a couple of new-to-me Color Club polishes and I really wanted to get them on my nails and this seemed like it would be the perfect fit. There's something so dreamy about a candy colored galaxy, don't you think?

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For this mani, I wanted to start with a lighter base to build my gradient onto, but I didn't want to go wtih white so instead I went with a soft pastel purple that I felt like would pop the gradient but wouldn't be too stark (or absolutely infuriating to work with, like white polish.) To build the gradient, I decided that I wanted a bit of a curve to the design, so I instead of applying the polishes to my makeup sponge in a straight diagonal, instead I applied a sort of S shape in the middle shade and then half circles of the two corner shades on either side of it. (If this isn't making sense, please do check out the video tutorial over at @pblnails!) To get the opacity and blend I was looking for, I did three passes of my sponging and then tidied up my edges with a clean up brush dipped in acetone. 

With the stamping, it was tempting to go a little hard and make it a little complicated, but in the end I decided that the best plan was to just use this one image and alternate the direction. I stamped it in white, of course, to get the most amount of contrast possible while still maintaining an overall fairly soft vibe. 

I had thought about making this matte - and honestly probably would have if I wasn't in a bit of a water based top coat situation right now that makes matte a little bit trickier than usual - but I ended up finishing off with two coats of water based top coat to seal in the stamping and add shine. And voila!

I swear, I'm currently in a state of just straight up love with all of the bright colors my brain is telling me that I'm allowed to reach for now that the days are long and the weather is hot. There are just so many different designs that I've had in my head for months that have been waiting for summer to come - so keep an eye out for some fun designs to come!

If you want to keep an eye out for all of my nail art as well as my video tutorials for all of the mani's I do, please do follow me over at @pblnails on Instagram!

Thanks for reading!