One of my favorite types of mani's to do during the hotter months of the year are the really warm toned sunset gradients. I think there's a lot you can do with them - and actually a lot of ways to do them - but for this mani I really wanted to just keep it simple and almost a little bit expected. I went with a purple to orange neon gradient with some beachy stamping and I'm a little bit in love. 

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When it comes to reaching for neons in the summer, I pretty much always head to my Color Club drawer. I have a pretty huge collection of their neon polishes and I think they work just absolutely beautifully to create bases for nail art. Because I wanted this gradient to transition really smoothly from orange to purple, I knew that I was going to need a couple of pink shades in between, so I made this a four shade gradient. I went with the brightest neon green I own, a blue toned neon pink, a more sort of magenta shade somewhere between pink and purple, and then a deeper royal purple neon. 

Lately, rather than a white base for my gradients, I've instead been going with a pastel that fits the color story of the gradient. (Honestly, I just sort of hate white polish so I avoid using it whenever possible.) For this one, I went with a pastel peach shade and applied one coat to all of my nails and let it dry completely before applying a liquid latex cuticle barrier. Next, I applied all of my neon shades to a wedge makeup sponge and pounced it onto the nail carefully to deposit color and blend them together. For this mani, I did three passes of sponging to get the opacity and blend I was looking for.

Initially I had planned on stamping all of my nails, but as I was looking at the stamping plate I was planning to use I just knew that I wanted to keep this simpler and more clean, so I only stamped on my middle two fingers. I used this really great palm tree image for my ring finger to really drive home that sunset vibe - always a summer favorite design - and then for my middle finger I wanted to add some text so I used the "Feeling Beachy" image from the same plate.

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

Well, that's it. I'm obsessed. I don't know why all of my mani's aren't neon gradients because I just love them so much and as soon as I do one, I want to basically only do neon gradients for the rest of forever. Healthy, right? And by healthy I mean... clearly neurodivergent.

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