One thing that I saw a lot of when I was scrolling around looking for fall nail art inspiration (this month between Halloween and Christmas can definitely be a little bit tricky) I saw a lot of skittle mani's featuring gradients of warm browns and I felt pretty inspired by the idea. Browns aren't polishes that I tend to reach for often, but I knew that I had some good ones in my collection so I just had to find the right ones. I then decided to add some really simple graphic stamping with some champagne gold shimmer because... why not!

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When I was choosing the polishes that I wanted to use for this mani, I wanted them to all have a sort of dusty, desaturated kind of a feel that would evoke that sort of latte vibe. I ended up only choosing four (I tend to pretty consistently just match my pinkie and my thumb and that's what I did here as well) and went from a pale beige shade through to a sort of ashy medium brown. I feel like I kind of  messed up my order a bit - the first coat of the warmer brown on my middle finger did apply much lighter than the ashy brown on my first finger on the first coat, but... you know, it is what it is and sometimes I'm too precious. I applied two coats of each polish to my nails for opacity.

I've had the Hit The Bottle Material World 01 stamping plate for a couple of months now, but with Halloween there wasn't a chance to use it until now - and trust, it will definitely be getting some play here on the blog coming up. I knew pretty much immediately that this really simple image was going to work perfectly for the overall vibe that I was going for and decided, for a little bit of extra interest and texture, to fill in the dots with a shimmery gold polish. I used a dotting tool to fill them in straight on the stamper head and then let it dry down somewhat before applying it directly to the nails while the second coat of polish was still tacky. 

Once I was happy with my design and had cleaned up my edges, I sealed it in with a water based top coat and then followed with a layer of matte top coat to take down the shine and really drive home that ashy vibe. And voila!

There's honestly just something about this that screams coffee shop, isn't there? And really, it's only partially because of the fact that all of these colors look like they could be colours of different lattes or frappucinos, right? I mean... maybe? Anyway, I'm super happy with how these turned out and I wouldn't be surprised if, at some point, I do some other color story version of this mani because it's a pretty versatile image, I think. 

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