I have to admit, there's a bit of a strange thing in my head that tells me it isn't time for tropical neon nail designs until July officially hits. Even though I might shoehorn some neon nails in other places sometimes, I'm always super excited to get into what my brain firmly designates as Summer Nails and just go hard with the neon and the tropical and all of the other things my very specific brain has decided belong in the summer. And, of course, our #CBBxManiMonday theme for this month is Summer, so I decided to open the month with a tropical bang. 

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I've actually been dying to get more use out of the Bio Sculpture Canada Live Life Loudly Collection* but I was waiting for my brain to declare it officially summer to really go for it. For this mani, I chose four shades from the collection to create what I tend to think of as a summer sunrise gradient. Now, generally I try to keep the lightest shade in the gradient at the base of the nails because I like to use the lightest shade as my base, but because this gradient was necessarily moving in the opposite direction I decided to start with a super pale barely blue polish as my base. 

Once that base polish was dry, I applied a cuticle barrier and then went in with my sponging to create the gradient. I ended up needing three layers of sponging to get the saturation and blend that I was looking for and I did find that the three lighter shades did blend a little more smoothly than that purple at the base. 

For my stamping, I was super excited to finally reach for the MoYou London Trolls 04 Stamping Plate, which I actually ordered months ago and have been holding off on using because, again, my brain decided that this plate was for summer and it had to wait to be used. (My brain, I will admit, is very annoying sometimes...) I knew that I wanted to use the two single palm tree images, but I also really wanted to find a way to use the sort of logo-like diamond shaped palm tree image as well. Ultimately what I decided was to do one palm tree on my two outer nails, two palm trees on my ring finger and thumb, and then add the logo-style image to my middle finger using black stamping polish for some strong contrast. Ultimately I think this gave a cohesive overall mani that worked with the base.

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

I have to say - I'm super excited with how this mani turned out and I have a sneaking suspicion that it's going to have been the jumping off point for a barrage of neon gradients to come. I swear, I'm going to need to go buy more makeup sponges because I just have so many ideas for different gradient designs that I want to try - so keep an eye out for those.

Be sure to head over to Cosmetic Proof and See The World In PINK for more Summer themed nail art for this week's #CBBxManiMonday and also check me out over on Instagram @pblnails for video tutorials for all of the designs I post here on the blog!

Thanks for reading!