I can not even tell you how excited I was to get today's mani on my nails, I sincerely can't. As soon as I received the CjS-324 Stamping Plate, which was included in a Mystery Box, I was beyond excited to put together some version of this design. I initially planned on going with a more traditional red, green and white color story, but in the end I was in the mood for something a little more cozy. One of my favorite cozy color combos - not just for my nails - is pink and grey and I think it worked perfectly with this design. 

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 THIS POST IS IN PARTNERSHIP WITH PUEEN COSMETICS.

When I started plotting out my ideas for this year's marathon of Christmas nail art, a lot of the designs I was drawn to were the more abstract designs that have become so popular in the last couple of years. As much as I love the more on-the-nose Christmas designs, I think there's definitely something to be said for a more blobby abstract design at this time of year as well. For this mani, I decided to grab for the Pueen Accent Fun 01 Stamping Plate a really bold holiday color palette!

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I think sometimes, in my everything and the kitchen sink approach to nail art, I tend to forget how much value there can be in just keeping it simple. For today's Halloween nail design, I wanted to put together a mani that balanced simplicity with a visually interesting design - and I feel pretty good about it. It's very simple, but there's bats... so what more could a person need? 

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I feel like I can't let a Halloween season go by without doing some sort of spooky haunted house or graveyard silhouette nails - they're just such a staple! That said, I do like to change it up at least a bit every time so I'm not just throwing the same mani's out there every year. For this year's silhouette mani, I decided to go with a neon vertical gradient base, which I think is something I've never done before. And I think it turned out genuinely stunning!

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I definitely went into this year's marathon of Halloween nail art with very specific intentions of doing some more minimalist designs, since I have a tendency to go full on kitchen sink when I have a theme in front of me. For this mani, specifically, I kept it really, really simple with a simple créme + flakie topper base along with one stamping image repeated across the entire hand. And I LOVE IT. Seriously, this mani definitely reminded me just how much simple can work when done right. 

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Today's mani takes a significant amount of inspiration from a mani from @hannys_manis from last Halloween season and I just fell so completely in love with the design that I had to do my own spin on it for this year's Halloween season. I have to admit, I've done a lot less reverse stamping this year thamn I did last year because I have a tendency to convince myself it's going to take forever and be exhausting or something, but it really does almost always come together really smoothly. 

Without further ado, let's get into the nails!

While I do try to be good and not order every single stamping plate I see - even with as much nail art as I do, I already have plates in my collection that I've never used so I hardly need more - sometimes there are plates that I just can't resist picking up. Recently, as I was perusing the stamping plates avaiable from Aliexpress, I saw this Halloween plate from Mr. Fox and I just had to have it, very specifically because I wanted to create this mani or some version of it. There's just something so adorable about these dancing skeletons!

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One of my favorite and most popular Halloween mani's that I've ever posted was a neon skittle featuring a combination of bats and spiderwebs. While I was tempted to do a straight up recreation simply using a different color palette, I decided instead to do a completely different mani that took inspiration from that one but definitely didn't recreate it. I often tend to lean into either bright or vampy colors for Halloween, but for this one I decided to go with some muted fall tones and I think it works pretty well!

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Happy  Monday, all! Our March theme for #CBBxManiMonday is Spring/Green and because I'm neck deep in a random hyperfocus around doing a sort of rainbow gradient through my feed (my brain, I'm telling you...) I decided to stick with something springy in a blue color palette for this week and I'll transition into the green of it all next week. I don't think I've ever done a gradient skittle before using all one color, but I've really wanted to and with the stamping design I had in mind for this one it seemed like they time. 

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When I sit down to think of inspiration for these types of themed nail art marathons that I do for Halloween and Christmas every year, I definitely look through a lot of different sources to try and spark creativity. One of those sources is my own previous work, where I feel like I can find new ways to use old ideas, if that makes sense at all outside of my head. For today's mani, I took inspiration from this mani I posted a couple of months ago and I did a pretty direct recreation of it, changing up the color scheme and some other details to bring in the holiday vibe and make it it's own thing. 

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Admittedly, when I sat down and started thinking about which polishes I wanted to bust out for Halloween nails, the ones I used to create this mani didn't even come close to entering my mind. It actually wasn't until I saw this mani from Ash @ashxmcgrath on Instagram that I absolutely had to create my own version of it. I mean... I was immediately in love with the design and I loved the really frothy pink color palette. Of course, the original mani was hand painted, as all of her gorgeous work is, and I am absolute trash at hand painting - but luckily I had the perfect stamping plate to use to make my own version of this design!

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So today, the day I'm posting this, is my birthday. And it's one of those big, scary birthdays with a 0 at the end of the number, which is admittedly a little bit more stressful than I was anticipating. Anyway, I kept my birthday in mind when I sat down to do this mani and decided that I would lean into what I do this time every year, which is Harry Potter themed nails. Honestly, there is a fairly good chance that I will be curling up with some Harry Potter movies this weekend and trying to enjoy my big bad birthday. 

I want to acknowledge that I understand a lot of people don't have the affection for the Harry Potter series that they might have once because of the author, and I think that's perfectly valid and I support that. However, for me I have so much affection and warmth and love for this series that I will continue to enjoy it and find comfort and joy in it while actively disagreeing with the opinions and behavior of the author. 

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Today's mani is sort of an amusing one for me because when I sat down to try out the technique I used for it, I actually felt pretty confident it wasn't going to work, at least not the way I was hoping. In the end, though, not only did it do pretty much exactly what I hoped it would, but I fell completely in love with it and now I want to do twenty-six different versions of it in a hyper focus sort of fashion. As I do. Admittedly, I am pushing the #CBBxManiMonday floral theme a little bit this week, since it's definitely more leafy and botanical than floral, but we're going with it because I'm obsessed.

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As usual, I am an absolute fiend for a theme, so now that we're within spitting distance of Easter it's time to bust out the pastels and the bunnies and the Easter eggs to dive right in. Pretty much every year I do some kind of pastel Easter Egg Skittle Mani and, of course, this year wasn't going to be any different - especially when the new Whats Up Nails B074 Stamping Plate* has the absolute perfect speckled image for it! 

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You may recall, if you saw my Amethyst Inspired Smooth Marble Mani recently, that I felt inspired to try this technique using different polishes for more of a white quartz inspired look. Admittedly, I'm having a bit of a moment with pretty rocks these days and I'm having a lot of fun playing with different ideas for how to get the look of natural stone onto my nails. For today's mani, I neutralized the color palette to almost white and added some modern abstract stamping for a little bit of interest and punch, and I am completely and totally obsessed with the final result.

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I've noticed a bit of a pattern with myself that I'm not entirely sure what to make of, if we're being honest. This will be the third January in a row where I've found myself inspired to do some sort of marble or natural stone look nails. I don't know what it is about the post holiday season that leads to this, but it is definitely a thing I just keep doing without realizing it until after the fact. For this mani, I was actually inspired by an amethyst ring that I picked up at the local crystal shop recently (you can see the ring in one of the photos below, if you're interested) and though this didn't turn out quite as smoky and purple as intended I do actually really, really love it.

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I will fully admit that a lot of my holiday nail art designs lean on snowflakes, but I honestly feel like snowflakes are one of the most versatile design elements for this time of year and I have no shame in finding as many different ways to use them as possible. For today's mani, I knew I wanted to do a rich plaid design and then add some contrast with white Christmasy stamping on top... and, of course, the best white wintery stamping in my opinion is definitely snowflakes, which I think really shine on top of this base. 

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When it comes to looking for inspiration for nail art, especially in a situation like this of 24 themed mani's all in a row, I spend a lot of time looking at the gorgeous work that professional nail techs do. Because I work generally with traditional nail polish, a lot of the things that the pro's are doing with gel and acrylic are just not things that I can recreate, but I can definitely take inspiration. One thing that I love that I see from professionals a lot is when every nail is different but there's an overall cohesive vibe that makes the whole thing work. Today's many is definitely drawing on that inspiration within my own sort of personal style and vibe. 

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Ahhhhh! I am so excited that it's almost December and time to dig down into a marathon of holiday themed nail art. Before we get into that, though, I've got a seriously impressive new holiday nail polish collection to share with you guys! I have to admit, when I first saw the display for the new Sally Hansen Miracle Gel Joy Of Colour Collection* I almost just bought all of the polishes, but I decided to hold off and within a couple of days the people over at Sally Hansen were kind enough to send it over for me to share with you guys. Seriously, I can't even express how gorgeous this collection is - even more beautiful than I could have expected just seeing the polishes in the bottle.

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Sometimes I pick up a stamping plate because it has a lot of variety and I know it'll get a lot of use and other times I have a specific mani FIRMLY stuck in my head. Although the stamping plate I used for this mani definitely does still fit into the former category, I will fully admit that I picked up with some version of today's nail art design in mind for it. I didn't have specific shades picked out or all of the little details decided, but as soon as I added this to my cart I was always going to end up with some version of this mani - and because I messed up the first time, I actually ended up with two versions at the end of the day. 

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