Oftentimes when I'm trying to work within a theme for nail art I try to look for paintings and photographs that fit with that theme until something sparks my creativity. Today's mani was directly inspired by the Google image results from searching "Neon Tropical Leaves". Like... literally, all of the results. Immediately, I wanted a black base with bright neon stamping in these rich jewel tones. This mani actually took a couple of tries and I HATED the results the first time (my own bad decisions are to blame, if we're being honest) but I'm kind of in love with the final product. 

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If I'm starting with a black base, you can almost guarantee that I'm starting first with a layer of peel off base coat and then one coat of Starrily's Vantablack. This black polish is my absolute ride-or-die, all time obsessed favorite black polish. The reason that I always try to apply it over a peel off base coat is that it's SO INSANELY PIGMENTED that removal is just way more straight forward if I can peel it off, because otherwise it can get a little dicey. Seriously, though. Vantablack. Available from (and gifted to me by...) NailStuff.ca. Get it. Love it. It's the best black polish I've ever tried by leaps and bounds.

As much as I love this base polish, I did want to add a little bit of texture and interested to the base, so I grabbed for topper. Paradox (H) from ILNP is a shift ultra chrome flakie topper with added holo that just absolutely sings over a black base - and is in the perfect color family to work with the colors I was going for with the stamping.

For the stamping, I really wanted the pink, blue and purple to all really come through on the nail, so I grabbed for three Whats Up Nails stamping polishes and paired them with one of my favorite plates for doing tropical leaves nails. These polishes are super strong and opaque over black, maybe not as bright as over a lighter base but still with a strong color. To get the sort of blend I was looking for, I just applied dots of the polish randomly over the image and then scraped twice with a light pressure to get a smooth blend. To ensure that each nail looked unique, I alternated the direction I placed the image as well as changing up the order that I applied the polishes to the plate in, which for some reason did change the balance of the colors after scraping.

Once I was happy with my stamping, I sealed it in with a water based top coat before finishing with a generous layer of quick dry glossy top coat and voila!

It feels really, really weird to do a black base for a mani in the middle of the summer, but I really think the pop of the stamping makes it make perfect sense. I dunno - what do you think?

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