More often than I might like to admit, the mani you see here on the blog is my second try at the design. What happens sometimes is that I finish a mani, take pictures, and then realize that I should have done something differently and it just... isn't what it could be. Now, I could probably be less of a perfectionist, but there have been so many times where the second attempt was in a completely different league from the first that I generally just go again and hope for the best. Today's mani is one of these instances. I tried it the first time and it was... fine. It was good, even, probably, but I sort of couldn't help seeing all of the things that I wished I had done differently every time I looked at it, so I just had to give it another go and I'm entirely in love with how it turned out. Let this be the lesson - sometimes good enough is worth improving if you have the time and energy to give it a go.

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This whole mani really was inspired by OPI's Bee-Hind The Scenes, which is a pale buttery yellow créme polish from their Spring 2021 Hollywood Collection. There's something just... so beautiful about this polish and I'm so glad I finally scooped it up recently since I didn't grab it last year when it was released. From there, I decided to just pair it with all OPI polishes for my base and dry brushing. Bare With Me is my favorite sheer nude polish for this type of mani because it leans quite beige and helps to camouflage imperfections in my nail bed and blurs my nail line without really looking like necessarily I have anything on my nails. I also grabbed for Alpine Snow, a must have white créme for any collection, and Suzi's Slinging Mezcal*, a yellow gold shimmer from their Spring 2020 Mexico City Collection. 

I applied three coats of Bee-Hind The Scenes to my thumb, first, and pinkies along with two coats of Bare With Me to my middle two fingers and let those bases dry down before I moved onto to my nail art.

Dry brushing inwards from two corners of my nails is a bit of a staple technique for me at this point and I think it's a great base for stamping - especially stamping that isn't going to be full coverage on the nail. With most the polish wiped off the brush, I applied light strokes of Bee-Hind The Scenes, Alpine Snow and Suzi's Slinging Mezcal at opposing corners of the nails, swiping towards the center of the nail to get a nice trail. 

Next, I went in with my stamping. For this mani, I used two different images from the KADS Flower 057 Stamping Plate that both had the same sort of scribbly daisies on dotted swoops - for lack of a better description. I placed the images on the middle two nails with the intention of filling the nail without overwhelming or muddying it. Next, to tie in my outer nails, I applied a portion of the dotted swoop to each one, keeping towards a corner and resisting the urge to add more. Next, I went in with a dotting tool and a sunny yellow stamping polish to add centers to the flowers for an extra pop. 

Once I was happy with my stamping, I sealed it in with a nail art top coat before following with a quick dry glossy top coat for shine and volume. And voila!

I'm so madly in love with this mani that I can barely stand it. It feels like a pairing of sort of modern styles when it comes to nails with a distinctly 90s vibe that brings me back to junior high and high school - much like what the entire fashion industry seems to be doing right now. One thing that I'm definitely coming away with after having done some version of this mani twice is really the value of adding those tying in images onto the outer nails. I feel like sometimes the solid colored nails can feel stark and take away from the design, so adding a little bit of detail to really make everything cohesive goes a really long way. 

Be sure to head over to @pblnails on Instagram and follow me there to keep up on all of my nail art and for video tutorials for all of my designs!

Thanks for reading!