Stamping Kit Part II

A couple of weeks ago, I shared with you a few images from the super cheap stamping kit my roommate got me. However, I didn't share any images of the kit itself at that time.

This is what you get in the package, along with a small instruction sheet that is not overly helpful:

 

Dual ended stamper, plate holder, scraper, and five plates. 

Here are some close ups, with a penny for scale. If you are a European reader, our penny is about the size of a .02 euro coin. I'm not sure how it compares to Aussie currency, having never seen any. 

The small end of the stamper.

The large end.

And a couple shots of the plates themselves. Note the size of the "full nail" images: 

Obviously, this is the only plate I haven't stamped from yet.

The kit didn't contain any kind of storage, so for $1.99 I picked up a mini photo album from Michael's:

 

Right now I'm only doing one plate per pocket, but if my collection expands I might look into mounting them on cardstock or something, so that I can get 2 per pocket. This could also, theoretically, eliminate the need for the plate holder (I know some people don't like them, but I found it somewhat handy). 

 

The album also is a good place to store the scraper and plate holder. 

I haven't come up with a way to store the stamper, other than maybe knitting a small drawstring bag to hold both the album and the stamper, but I haven't put that much thought into it yet. For now they are living on a corner of my desk, and don't seem too upset about it. 

Just Glitz

 Just a quick post today before I head to work.  Two coats of Essie "Smooth Sailing" and one of "Set in Stones" on the accent nail.

 With all that glitter, I know this mani will be a pain to take off, but it's so pretty, I don't really care right now. Next time I will remember to do the white glue peel off base coat everyone was talking about a week or two ago. You know, when I actually have white glue in the house.

Happy hump day!

Swatch: Vivid

Last week I pulled a really old polish out of my drawer to use as an accent color, and it reminded me how much I loved the color. I thought I'd do some swatches to show you.

This is Sally Hansen Lacquer Shine in "Vivid." It's a very dark red shimmer--like crushed garnets in some light. It can almost take the appearance of a dark red layered over black, with a red shimmer on top.

I know I've said I'm not a big fan of shimmer polishes, but this is one polish that I make an exception for. Two, in fact, since it is the dreaded Sally Hansen, which I'd pretty much sworn of.

Other than the color, things I like about this polish: It can hold it's own after a single coat (I did two just for good measure, though). I also really like the brush, which is very long and thin. Normally I prefer a wider brush, like the one found in my Wet n Wild polish, but this one is nice, too.

This was the type of color that I wore in high school to annoy my mom. She had this rule about girls my age not wearing dark nail polishes because "They give the wrong impression." Around the age of sixteen, I just started ignoring that rule. After wearing this one once or twice, my mom asked to borrow it. After that, there were no rules about nail polish.

Did you have weird rules regarding polish use growing up?

My new favorite base coat

Where has this week gone? I haven't had any time for nail art, it seems.

I've also kind of been avoiding blogger, since they finally did away with the old dashboard layout. I'm not crazy about the new one, but they seem to have made SOME improvements since I tried it when it first rolled out earlier this year.

But that is neither here nor there, and you're here for the nails, aren't you?

 Doesn't look so interesting, does it?

That right there is Essie "Grow Stronger." Pretty much since I started this blog, I've been talking about how bad my nails are peeling. I've had bouts with peeling nails on and off for years, but this had been, by far, the worst, most stubborn case of it I've ever had, and resulted in me trimming my nails way back.

The above shot shows my let hand (the better of the two) with one coat of Grow Stronger. On the package, it says that you can see results in five days, and you certainly can. I've worn this every day for three weeks, and have seen a vast improvement. Unfortunately, my line of work keeps undoing all of that progress, but I know that it keeps happening, and I know that my nails would be much worse without it.

Here you can see my right hand--the worse off of the two--before the base coat. Let me reitterate: This is what my nails look like after improvement. I did have tears that went at least a quarter of the way down my nails.

Every time I get to that point of almost, almost--I bang my hand or tear a nail or something gets stuck and I have to use my nails to pry something open, and then they get torn up again. But between constant moisturizing and this base, my nails are noticeably stronger (even when completely bare) and growing much more quickly. I think that once the stained bits grow out, I should be back to healthy, strong nails. Anyway, that's my theory and I'm sticking to it.

Grow Stronger is a pale pink in the bottle, but goes on clear. I did experiment, and after three coats you can kind of see a bit of milky color, but there really isn't enough to show up or affect a polish color.

Even if you don't have a bad case of the peelies, I would recommend this for anyone with weak nails, or who would like to grow them longer. I noticed that my manicures lasted on average 1-2 days longer with minimal damage--which is one reason why I don't have nail art today. I'm loath to take off my polish until it starts to chip (the slightest chip, however, and all bets are off!).

Essie Grow Stronger is $8, and you can find it anywhere Essie is sold. I got mine from Giant Eagle, but I have also seen it at Target and I think at Walmart.

The Silver Lining

Here is that manicure I wanted to do last week, before I got distracted by my stamping kit:

Colors used:
Brash "Blue Dream" (light blue)
Wet n Wild "Metallica" (silver)
Pure Ice "Touch Me Here" (black)
Essie "Luxedo" (purple)
Maybelline Color Show "Porcelain Party" (white)

I put on a base of "Blue Dream," then covered it with SV. The other colors are sponged at semi-random on top. If I ever do this one again, I might add a lightning bolt to the thumbs.

Happy hump day--Remember, you can see the silver lining from here!

Urk.

I have been a lazy, lazy blogger this week, wearing the same chipped manicure for the past three or four days. I've been either too tired, too busy, or some combination for the two to put together a decent mani. I know the design I want to do next, but I also know that there's a bit of time that will have to be invested in it and I just haven't had it to spare. So in the mean time, here is a quick and easy one I did last week that I got a ton of compliments on:

Colors used:
Sally Hansen Insta-Dri "Lightening"
Maybelline Color Show "Porcelain Party"
Claire's Nail Art Pen in black

This was super simple to do. I used tape to mask of the white area after doing the yellow base, and freehanded the rest. It was very attention getting and everyone loved it. I wore it to a car show to the delight of all.

Happy Monday and hopefully on Wednesday I'll be back with something a little newer.

Stamping Spam

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.