Things have been a little rough around here lately. They're getting better, but last week was hard and I was pretty down. To cheer my room, my roommate picked me up a stamping kit that she found at Michaels, of all places.
I've been wanting to try stamping ever since I found out what it was, and I was so excited that I kind of tore apart the kit before taking photos.
The kit is by Salon Express, and includes a double ended stamper, a scraper, a rubber mat to hold the plate, and five plates. One of them has full tail designs, and the other four are decorative images. I think she said it was $10 (US).
I already had a background color on with another post in mind, but I decided to just stamp over it. For this manicure, I have Brash "Blue Dream" as a base, with Wet n'Wild "Metalica" for the ray design (top row, middle). For the flowers, I used Pure Ice "Touch Me Here."
Since this was my first stamping mani, it took a little getting used to the tool, figuring out the right motion to use to get a good stamp on my nail. As you can see on my thumb, the "full nail" images aren't quite wide enough for my nails--in face the only nail they give full coverage to is my pinky. It doesn't really matter which way I turn it--they either aren't wide enough, or aren't long enough, since my nails are naturally long, even when trimmed as short as I can get them.
Kind of disappointing, but I wasn't super thrilled by some of the patterns, anyway. I can do dots, I've done flowers, and I'm not really a big fan of animal print. The stars, however, got to me. That was the first thing I wanted to do, but my polish was the wrong color for what I had in mind. So I faffed around a bit and when I changed manis, I laid out the base for this:
While the star pattern came out fairly clear on the nail, once again you can tell that the pattern isn't large enough to actually cover the nail, and the edges came out kind of rough. I'm sure this had as much to do with my amateur technique as it did with the fact that this is a cheap kit.
One of the individual patterns was a moon and stars. I knew I had to do that one. I used the same colors for all my nails ("Metallica" again, with Revlon's "Mysterious") but obviously the two solid coats on my ring finger are much darker than it came out as a stamp over silver.
And yes, the moon is sideways on purpose. Because I am a
geek and just can't do crescent moons the way they are "supposed" to be.
All of these manicures are pretty messy, since I was just playing around with them. Sorry. They were more for practice than aesthetics.
The most recent one I did was this. Here I have Sally Hansen "Vivid" over Finger Paints "Tiffany Imposter" with a little butterfly in "Metallica" (can't tell that's one of my favorite polishes, can you? I also adore the look of shimmery/glittery/metallic polishes stamped on cremes).
It turns out that "Metallica" isn't quite as opaque as I'd hoped. It can handle one color in the background, but not two.
I actually wore this one for a couple of days before I remembered to get photos of it. (Bad blogger! No cookie!) I'm still trying to determine if some of the issues I'm having are my technique, my polish, or the kit itself. Overall the images are printing pretty clear, but not always in their entirety, and sometimes I'll have extra polish around the image, which probably comes down to me not scraping it enough.
This kit has been a lot of fun to play around with, and if anything, it's made me one one of the nicer sets even more. I'll keep messing around with it and posting pictures so that you can see the various images that come in the set.
Kind of disappointing, but I wasn't super thrilled by some of the patterns, anyway. I can do dots, I've done flowers, and I'm not really a big fan of animal print. The stars, however, got to me. That was the first thing I wanted to do, but my polish was the wrong color for what I had in mind. So I faffed around a bit and when I changed manis, I laid out the base for this:
While the star pattern came out fairly clear on the nail, once again you can tell that the pattern isn't large enough to actually cover the nail, and the edges came out kind of rough. I'm sure this had as much to do with my amateur technique as it did with the fact that this is a cheap kit.
One of the individual patterns was a moon and stars. I knew I had to do that one. I used the same colors for all my nails ("Metallica" again, with Revlon's "Mysterious") but obviously the two solid coats on my ring finger are much darker than it came out as a stamp over silver.
All of these manicures are pretty messy, since I was just playing around with them. Sorry. They were more for practice than aesthetics.
I actually wore this one for a couple of days before I remembered to get photos of it. (Bad blogger! No cookie!) I'm still trying to determine if some of the issues I'm having are my technique, my polish, or the kit itself. Overall the images are printing pretty clear, but not always in their entirety, and sometimes I'll have extra polish around the image, which probably comes down to me not scraping it enough.
I've been wanting to try a gradient again, ever since my last botched attempt. This time I used a cosmetic sponge (half of one, actually. Waste not, want not). It came out sooo much better this time around.
It'll be a shame to take it off for the hero portion!
I really loved the Insta-Dri polish. This was my first time using it and I really like the way it came out. It was a great, fast drying, single coat polish, and it was exactly the right shade for what I wanted to do.
