Nail Stamping- Getting Started

The Basics

So, you want to start nail stamping for the first time, but not sure where to start?

Here's what you'll need as a bare minimum:

• Some kitchen roll to protect your work surface and to wipe your scraper off in between stamping
• A pretty stamping plate :)
• A stamper
• A scraper/old store card
• Stamping polish or regular polish with high opacity
• Nail polish remover/acetone to clean your plate and scraper
• Cotton pads for the above
• Sticky tape or a lint roller to clean off your stamper and cuticles 
• Some paper 
• A good topcoat

 It's not much, right.

A couple of tips you'll need to take into consideration when stamping for the first time:

The nail surface you're stamping on:

Make sure the polish you are about to stamp on is DRY.  Not 'I've left it a couple of minutes, it should be okay' dry, but 'I am confident if I stab it with my finger nail it will be fine' dry.  The best thing to ensure this is a thin coat of Seche Vite left for a few minutes.  It also helps you if you mess up your stamping and you don't get it perfect first time, you can run tape or acetone free remover over it to remove it without risking damaging your polish!

Your stamper

If it's a marshmallow or squishy stamper, a light roll over the image will pick it up.  If it's a hard Konad type one, you'll need to press down firmly.  It's all trial and error, which is why I always suggest having a sheet of paper on standby so you can try things out before you take the plunge.

Your scraper 

When I think back to years ago when I used to use Konad scrapers, I shudder.  They had a small, long, thin blade running across them, so they would scratch your plate every single time.  I often see people using them now and think NOOOOOOOOOO!!!  Using a thin, flexible piece of plastic such as a store card or even an old credit card will enable you to vary the angle you scrape at and help you to develop good technique when scraping.

The stamping polish

Pictured clockwise from left:Barry M Foil Effects 320/442, Models Own Chrome Cerise,Avon Metallic Effects Icy Purple, Colour Club Harp-On-It, Mundo de Unas Black and Konad Blue.

There's a lot to choose from here.  The Konad ones work well, but you may have heard a buzz around the Mundo de Unas ones.  WOW.  I mean, WOW.  They are the only ones I will ever use now- yes they smell strong, but I've never found anything else so opaque and crisp for stamping or if you mess up, you can use tape to remove the stamping polish from your nail!  It's perfect!  But shipping is expensive and it sells out on European sites :(

Other great stamping polishes tend to be chrome or foil ones- for example, the ones from Barry M are great (as do some of their regular polishes), and the Models Own Chrome collection are amazing.  The Avon Metallics range also stamps really well, as do the Holographics from Color Club - I ended up collecting all of these in the end although they cost me waaaaay too much here in the UK, but hey, you can use them as a regular polish AND a stamping polish (that's how I justified it anyway!  :P)

Think of a one coater polish that's mega opaque, and you've probably got a good stamping polish.
Beware that regular polish dries faster than stamping polish, so you will need to work fast or it will dry before you even get to pick it up.

Nail Polish Remover/ Acetone

Now, this is down to personal choice.  Personally, I don't use acetone for anything apart from removing glitter (damn you, glitter!) or gel polish (damn you even more, gel polish!).  Why?  Because I don't feel it's needed.

I use acetone free polish remover to clean my plates and scraper (using acetone may also wear away at your scraper) and I use the same for clean up.
I don't use acetone or polish remover to clean my stamper- I run some sticky tape over it.  If you're priming your stamper (there will be a separate blog post which will contain tons of info on stampers) then maybe you will need to use a little acetone.  I am just overly cautious about acetone ruining my stamper and making it dry out and crack.

Technique

Everyone has a different way of stamping, and it's about finding what works best for you, but here are your basic steps:

1. Make sure your surfaces are clean - your nail surface, stamper and plates - free of any marks or hairs or bits of dust and use the tape on your stamper and nail polish remover on your plates to ensure they are ready.
2. Plop some stamping polish down onto your image in a line over the first 1/3 - 1/2 of your chosen image.
3. Scrape that bad boy.  One or two good ones should do it- try scraping at an angle of about 45 degrees so you can see the polish settle in your pretty image.
4. Roll your stamper over the image as soon as you can- like I said, vary the pressure to find out what gets you the best results.
5. And stamp!  If your stamper is squisy, you can just press your nail into it or roll, if it's hard Konad styleee, then don't press too hard or your nail will feel it!  (If you've stamped with Mundo de Unas and you're not happy with your results, get some sticky tape and run it over the nail and pull off- the stamping polish will come with it.  Repeat until you have got rid of it and start again).
6. Give it a few minutes and then float some top coat over each of your nails to seal in your design et voila!   

Practice makes perfect! 

I know you're really excited and want to stamp perfectly first time, but as I found, it rarely happens as there are variables involved, including your mood!  Try to be patient (I know it's hard) and use different techniques to improve the quality and crispness of your image, such as scraping at different angles and varying pressure when you pick up your images on your stamper.  

Use that bit of paper and swatch to your heart's content!  Then when you're confident you've got it down, go for it!  :D

Stamping Plates 101 - The Rectangular Ones

 

Why stamping?

I think the main reason to start stamping is that we saw something awesome and wanted it on our nails - either thinking 'Ooooh, that girl's nails look amazing!  How did she do that?!' and discovering it was stamping and not nail vinyls, or seeing a stamping plate with some amazing designs and thinking 'MUST.HAVE.NOW.'  Mine was a blend of the two.  I remember buying tons of stamping plates about 8 years ago from Konad and sucking at stamping; like, I could barely pick up a tiny little butterfly to stamp on my nails and I had zero patience :(  I remember the times... it was sad times.

Stamping vs nail wraps - I find vinyls and wraps too fiddly; placement is always tricky and if you had to lift it to re-place it again, its lose some stickiness and then boom, barely any wear time.  They're also pretty pricey for what they are and I just got annoyed by them in the end!
With stamping, it's all about making it unique and it's easy too!  You can pick your background colour and your stamping colour and even do gradients, blends and all sorts to make it exactly the way you want it.  Woo hoo!

 

 Which plates should I choose?

There's a ton to choose from, so I'm going to start which my favourites in the larger, rectangular variety category.

A couple of notes:

- All plates you buy brand new should have a thin, blue film over the images side of the plate to protect it from scratches.  If you see superficial scratches, don't worry, it's doubtful they will pick up when you stamp, but if there are big ones and they do affect your stamping, contact the supplier, because that's not cool. 

- Also, some have a plastic backing, some don't.  If they don't, watch yourself - they can be mega sharp on the sides and you can scratch/cut yourself.  Even the Uberchic ones with the thin backing and rounded edges are still sharp.  We are dealing with stainless steel here, after all.

- All plates are my own and were not send to me by the manufacturer, so these are my honest reviews on these plates.  If anything is sent to me and I review it, I will inform you explicitly.  :)

- I am just getting started with blogging, so if my photos suck, I'm really sorry- I am working on this whole photo taking malarkey and promise they will get better.  To add to my woes, taking plate pictures is hard because of the damned reflection!  :(

 

 Moyou London

Moyou London are a friendly UK based company but they do ship internationally and they release 3 new plates every Friday!  This is good and bad - good in that you can always have up-to-the minute designs, bad in that your bank balance depletes unusually fast!
Their plates are stunning.  Like I would hug them if they were big enough and if it wasn't really, really weird.  They make me freak out about how beautiful they are, as all awesome stamping plates will, and they make me want to swatch immediately.  Moyou also have a series called XL where the images are a few millimetres bigger for those of us with longer or bigger nails- I usually go for these as I have more chance of getting the entire image on my nail if it's not a full image plate- as shown above.  They cost £4.99 a pop and only come in the rectangular size in a cute sleeve specific to the collection you are buying.  Don't confuse these with Moyou from the USA - they sell the smaller disc plates.

 Dashica

 

 

Dashica ship internationally with a spend of over €75 (this is way too easy to hit!).  These plates, like Moyou, are absolutely beautiful- so far I have only tried the Infinity plates, but there are 3 other sizes in her plates.  I chose the Infinity ones as there is a choice of full images and nail sized designs on each plate and I am always more attracted to those images on the Infinity plates.  The designs are unique and I love the fact that you have some Hello Kitty and cuteness thrown in for good measure!  These are the same size as the Moyou plates and the quality is excellent, and they do not come with a protective sleeve for storage.  These are only €4.99 each, which is a freaking steal.

Uberchic

 

 

Uberchic ship from the USA, and if you live in the UK or Europe, take about two weeks to arrive- delivery is $10, which isn't bad.

There isn't a huge collection of these plates- just 2 sets at the moment, consisting of 3 pretty large plates, which are sold at $24.99.  I was going to buy both sets, but the second set had a load of nautical and holiday themed images, which didn't really float my boat.  Oh dear, pun unintended believe it or not!  Set 1 is awesome and if you love peacocks, flowers and pretty prints, you will love it.  They just came bubble wrapped and have no sleeve, which would've been cool to have. Again, the quality of these plates is fantastic and I love them, even if they are a little more pricey, but you do get about 30 nail sized images on each plate.

Born Pretty Store

 

 

Born Pretty is a company that offers free international shipping from China, so delivery to Europe is usually around one to two weeks and they do not come with sleeves.

They sell everything cute and shiny, including some brilliant nail plates in the classic small, round discs to the more recent launch of their larger, rectangular places- again, the same size as Moyou and Dashica plates.  These are crazy cheap, around $4 and you can often find them cheaper on ebay, which is weird, and there are always 10% off codes floating around for you to use on their site(mind you, this is only on full price products, and lots of products are always reduced by some amount, so it doesn't shave too much off, but great to have all the same).  Nail stamping groups I am a part of on Facebook often post cheaper plates from BP coming from eBay, so it's always good to keep an eye out.  These are the same size as Moyou and Dashica, but like I said, they have the little disc ones too.

 

My Online Shop

 

 

These plates ship from a lady in the Philippines from her website.  I haven't ordered from there but she told me shipping plates to the UK would be free, which is cool.  The massive plates called MJ plates are $18 each, and a friend I made on a stamping site on Facebook sent me two of hers as she didn't use them and they are the Hello Kitty and cartoon character ones- they are just too adorable.  $18 is a lot but the images are pretty unique and have around 30 images on each (obviously this varies) and the quality is amazing.  Sometimes there are discount codes around, I missed the last one, and they usually give you about 10% off.

Sugar Bubbles 

 

 

Rainbow Connection sells these in the UK and they also ship internationally.

I only have two because I just wanted to try them as they looked cute and they're £7 each, which is steep seeing as they are smaller than Moyou, Dashica and BP plates and no protective sleeve.  They stamp well and the designs are super cute (that's what sucked me in!) but I'm not sure I would buy these again as they are not value for money compared to the above ones I've mentioned.  Maybe if they were cheaper, I'd change my mind, but I have a ton of other plates capturing my attention right now so I'll probably give these a miss in future, unless they came out with something so cute I just HAD to have.

It scares me that I could talk about stamping plates forever, which is why you will have this one post about the larger, rectangular ones, and another about the smaller, classic disc shaped ones!  So watch this space for another post coming soon! :D

The One Nail Queen Launches!

Hello and welcome to my brand new blog!

I am so excited to be able to share my nail experiences (that sounds weird, huh, but in truth I've been painting my nails for over half my life!) and of course my reviews and recommendations on products I've tried and tested for real against life itself.

Any reviews I do are with products purchased with my own hard earned cash, and if they aren't, I will tell you explicitly, so don't worry.  I'm honest in my reviews, and if I don't like something, I will tell you, trust me. 

But what made me decide to write a blog in the first place?  There are tons of awesome nail bloggers out there, but I felt like one niche area was lacking in the nail blogger world- bloggers who reviewed stamping plates, polishes, stampers, scrapers, the lot!  There are a few fantastic bloggers who are obsessed with stamping, so I thought I'd join them and share my obsession too.

As you can see, the obsession grew and still is growing...

 

 I have an array of plates, from Moyou London to Uberchic, to Bundle Monster to Dashica (the latter is a recent discovery, and new obsession!).  The stampers I've tried range from the classic Konad to the highly sought after Creative Shop stamper.  My stamping polish collection consists of the first Konad one I bought to the most recent Mundo de Unas polishes.

If what I've just just mentioned makes you excited and nod your head- read on!  If not and you haven't got a clue what I'm on about- read on too!  :)

What would you like to see in this blog?  I will of course write about what I know and review anything new I've come across now and in the past couple of months, so stay tuned for some new blogs coming your way...

And please feel free to follow me on Instagram!  @theonenailqueen