Recently I've been really, really drawn to a lot of stamping designs I've seen that include a sort of scattered layering of different images in different colors and I always, always want to do that on my nails... and then it intimidates the crap out of me and I don't. For this week's #CBBxManiMonday though, I was in a bit of a mood and I decided it was worth a try. I had a sort of loose idea of what I was going to do and the stamping plate I wanted to use to do it, so I just went for it and I am immediately obsessed. Like... I literally wanted to take it off immediately and try another version of it, that's how obsessed. 

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I've been wanting to do a neon gradient from blue to yellow for a while now and I knew that I would end up pulling out at least one this summer, and this seemed like the perfect time. As always, I started with a nearly white base polish applied in one even coat to all of my nails, which I let dry down completely before going in with my gradient. Until this year, the neon yellows in my collection were just... not the ones for a gradient, but now that I have Sunshine Sway* from BioSculpture Canada, my neon gradient options are widely expanded and I was really excited to try out this one. I decided to use yellow, green, and then a sort of teal blue shade for this gradient and I applied it at a diagonal. 

I did alternate the direction of my gradients across the nails, which I think was extra important with this particular mani because it really did quite smoothly add a ton of dimension to the overall design. Once I finished the stamping particularly I really appreciated how subtle the different directions of the gradient tend to be. 

When I was choosing my stamping colours for this mani, I wanted to choose colors that really worked with and matched the colors in the gradient, but also that would show up. I started with a teal that is more ashy than the one I used for the gradient but very similar in tone, then I grabbed this sort of pastel neon yellow/green polish that I really, really wasn't sure was going to work, and then I decided I needed a black to really add contrast and pop the whole look overall. 

For the design, I started with the squiggly line pair image and applied it in the teal polish at the yellow end of the gradient on each nail. I felt like this really grounded the look and also helped to add to the subtlety of the gradient in the final product. Next, using the pastel yellow I applied some sort of wispy leaf images to each nail, keeping it towards the blue end of the design. This was also intended to add dimension in a subtle way. Finally, I went in with black stamping polish to first apply a tropical leaf image to each nail and then to add some dot stamping as well for even more visual interest.

Once I was happy with my stamping, I sealed everything in with a nail art top coat and then followed with a generous layer of quick dry glossy top coat for shine and volume. And voila!

I really am so, so in love with how this mani turned out. I think that being intentional about balance and contrasts and the overall color story is really what made this mani good and kept it from becoming too much, if that makes sense. I'm genuinely looking forward to trying out more nail art designs in this sort of style because I'm definitely drawn to them and having had some success I'm feeling a lot less intimidated.

Be sure to head over to Cosmetic Proof and See The World In PINK today for more Summer themed nail art designs for this week's #CBBxManiMonday! Also, check out the video tutorial for this mani and all of the other ones I post here on the blog over at @pblnails on Instagram!

Thanks for reading!