ELF Midnight

Let’s start with a brief swatch of ELF Midnight. When I originally applied Midnight, it looked like it’d be a lovely midnight blue shimmer in the bottle but on my nails it just looked black. Maybe if I had bright lighting, it’d look blue… So what did I do? Rummaged through my CND effects until I found Sapphire Sparkle. It really made a difference, totally brought out the blue shimmer! So in this thumb photo you can see the difference. I love my CND effects.

I stamped with Bundle Monster 21 and Avon Mirror Shine in Pink Ice (which is amazing btw)

Yeah I stamped over that striped thumb 😛

ELF Midnight

Let’s start with a brief swatch of ELF Midnight. When I originally applied Midnight, it looked like it’d be a lovely midnight blue shimmer in the bottle but on my nails it just looked black. Maybe if I had bright lighting, it’d look blue… So what did I do? Rummaged through my CND effects until I found Sapphire Sparkle. It really made a difference, totally brought out the blue shimmer! So in this thumb photo you can see the difference. I love my CND effects.

I stamped with Bundle Monster 21 and Avon Mirror Shine in Pink Ice (which is amazing btw)

Yeah I stamped over that striped thumb 😛

Stamping Polishes

I don’t use the Konad Special Polishes to stamp with because I just never got around to it. I wanted to buy them, Nick told me it was a silly purchase because I was sure to find something else that would work equally well.

Well, I feel like I’ve gained a bit of expertise in this stamping polish business to share my opinions…

First, what exact qualities do I look for in a polish to assess its stampability?

• Thickness 
• Must be nearly an one-coater
• Opacity
• Brightness of color

And that’s pretty much it. The thicker the polish, the better their stamping abilities will be. I’ve never tried this myself but people often leave the cap off their polishes for a while to help thicken the formula. If it’s TOO thick, a drop or two of polish thinner (NOT remover) will solve that.
When a polish is thick it helps the transfer progress go more smoothly and they will appear more opaque and detailed on the nail.

Alternatively, you do NOT want a polish that is runny. I don’t care if it’s an one coater. If it’s runny I’m not stamping with it. It creates havoc when I try to scrape, and no matter how lightly I roll over my stamper, it will SMUDGE. I have this problem with my beloved Sally Hansen chrome oldies.

The brands I use to stamp with are:

• Wet n Wild
• Avon
• MirrorShine Polishes
• China Glaze
• Khrome Collection
• Romantique Collection
• Sally Hansen Insta-Dri
• Sally Hansen Chrome

I have not tried Zoya, OPI, et cetera however I should explore that. I just prefer to stick to my tried and trues. Almost any polish can stamp, it just depends on how well they achieve the two qualities that I look for. Here are the pictures of the stamping polishes I use…

 My Insta-Dris! From Left to Right: Jumpin Jade, Whirlwind White, Wined Up, Co-Bolt Blue, Silver Sweep. I have determined that Whirlwind White is the best stamping polish I have for white, compared to CG Snow.

 My Wet n Wild’s. Burgundy Frost, my trusty stamping black: Black Creme (look how loved it is! The label is all gone), and Blue Moon.

 Avon MirrorShine polishes. They are FANTASTIC. You can order one from online with the link I provided above. From left to right: Pink Ice, Blaze, Glisten, Peach Ice, Polish. They are also easy to work with and I love their vividness.

Check out my Romantiques! I have both the cool and warm collections. They can be found on Amazon or any e-tailers such as 8ty8beauty.com, head2toebeauty.com, transdesign.com as well as any dusty bin.

China Glaze Khrome collection, able to find in any of the places I listed above. The Khrome collection is actually a six piece, but I cannot find Millennium. It’s my white whale. If you have one and want to get rid of it, talk to me. 🙂

 All the China Glazes dry in a decent amount of time, and transfer easily with light pressure on the stamper. Very easy to work with.

Here are my Sally Hansen babies. This is only half pictured, I figured they’d give you the idea. Fantastic for stamping, but dries HELLA fast, and are a huge pain in the butt when you have poorly engraved plates. You have to scrape and stamp in like, one second or something for it to even try to transfer. Also this polish requires you to press hard, so you must have a completely dry polish base to use these.
I have a white whale too: Sally Hansen Chrome in Amber. If you have that, come talk to me….

That’s all for now! When I find more good stamping polishes, I’ll come back here. 🙂

Stamping Polishes

I don’t use the Konad Special Polishes to stamp with because I just never got around to it. I wanted to buy them, Nick told me it was a silly purchase because I was sure to find something else that would work equally well.

Well, I feel like I’ve gained a bit of expertise in this stamping polish business to share my opinions…

First, what exact qualities do I look for in a polish to assess its stampability?

• Thickness 
• Must be nearly an one-coater
• Opacity
• Brightness of color

And that’s pretty much it. The thicker the polish, the better their stamping abilities will be. I’ve never tried this myself but people often leave the cap off their polishes for a while to help thicken the formula. If it’s TOO thick, a drop or two of polish thinner (NOT remover) will solve that.
When a polish is thick it helps the transfer progress go more smoothly and they will appear more opaque and detailed on the nail.

Alternatively, you do NOT want a polish that is runny. I don’t care if it’s an one coater. If it’s runny I’m not stamping with it. It creates havoc when I try to scrape, and no matter how lightly I roll over my stamper, it will SMUDGE. I have this problem with my beloved Sally Hansen chrome oldies.

The brands I use to stamp with are:

• Wet n Wild
• Avon
• MirrorShine Polishes
• China Glaze
• Khrome Collection
• Romantique Collection
• Sally Hansen Insta-Dri
• Sally Hansen Chrome

I have not tried Zoya, OPI, et cetera however I should explore that. I just prefer to stick to my tried and trues. Almost any polish can stamp, it just depends on how well they achieve the two qualities that I look for. Here are the pictures of the stamping polishes I use…

 My Insta-Dris! From Left to Right: Jumpin Jade, Whirlwind White, Wined Up, Co-Bolt Blue, Silver Sweep. I have determined that Whirlwind White is the best stamping polish I have for white, compared to CG Snow.

 My Wet n Wild’s. Burgundy Frost, my trusty stamping black: Black Creme (look how loved it is! The label is all gone), and Blue Moon.

 Avon MirrorShine polishes. They are FANTASTIC. You can order one from online with the link I provided above. From left to right: Pink Ice, Blaze, Glisten, Peach Ice, Polish. They are also easy to work with and I love their vividness.

Check out my Romantiques! I have both the cool and warm collections. They can be found on Amazon or any e-tailers such as 8ty8beauty.com, head2toebeauty.com, transdesign.com as well as any dusty bin.

China Glaze Khrome collection, able to find in any of the places I listed above. The Khrome collection is actually a six piece, but I cannot find Millennium. It’s my white whale. If you have one and want to get rid of it, talk to me. 🙂

 All the China Glazes dry in a decent amount of time, and transfer easily with light pressure on the stamper. Very easy to work with.

Here are my Sally Hansen babies. This is only half pictured, I figured they’d give you the idea. Fantastic for stamping, but dries HELLA fast, and are a huge pain in the butt when you have poorly engraved plates. You have to scrape and stamp in like, one second or something for it to even try to transfer. Also this polish requires you to press hard, so you must have a completely dry polish base to use these.
I have a white whale too: Sally Hansen Chrome in Amber. If you have that, come talk to me….

That’s all for now! When I find more good stamping polishes, I’ll come back here. 🙂

A few NOTDs

Nails of the Days, that is. I don’t really do them– I just post ’em as manicures, but I guess they would be categorized as Nails of the Day. Anywho. I’ve been focused on the Lippmann glitters for the last 9 days, I overlooked a manicure from back then. So this post will show you two manis, one from the past and one that I’m sporting now.

Base: Butter London Victoriana (light teal glitter)
Stamp: Sally Hansen Chrome in… something I forgot, it was a long time ago. But it’s a gold chrome.
Konad plate m78

Current manicure:

Base: Avon Electric Green, a light spring grass green jelly. About three coats to get it all evened out.
Stamping color: Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Jumpin’ Jade
Plate: Bundle Monster BM19

A few NOTDs

Nails of the Days, that is. I don’t really do them– I just post ’em as manicures, but I guess they would be categorized as Nails of the Day. Anywho. I’ve been focused on the Lippmann glitters for the last 9 days, I overlooked a manicure from back then. So this post will show you two manis, one from the past and one that I’m sporting now.

Base: Butter London Victoriana (light teal glitter)
Stamp: Sally Hansen Chrome in… something I forgot, it was a long time ago. But it’s a gold chrome.
Konad plate m78

Current manicure:

Base: Avon Electric Green, a light spring grass green jelly. About three coats to get it all evened out.
Stamping color: Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Jumpin’ Jade
Plate: Bundle Monster BM19

Stamping Tutorial!

• First you need to have a good, safe area for stamping. You will make a mess. I like cutting out pieces of cardboard and using that as my stamping area, but I’ve seen some people use paper towels.
• It’s okay to press kinda hard when transferring the image to your nail, sometimes it works best that way. 
• You must work QUICKLY. I can’t stress this enough.  You’ll find what speed you need, and it always varies on the polish. 
• Sometimes they say you should rough up the ends with a emery board file so that it’ll pick up the image better. Personally I don’t see the big deal or purpose in it. The texture still feels the same.
• ENSURE your nail polish base is dry! You don’t necessarily need a polished base, but if you do, make sure it’s completely dry and can handle being pressed upon on. We don’t want the polish bunching up and sliding, do we?
• You need lots of patience! It will suck the first few times then when you get it, it’s so easy and fun 🙂 
• For the first few times it’s good idea to practice stamping over your old manicures, because if it sucks horribly you can just scrap the whole thing, no big deal. 

————————————————————————–

STEP BY STEP PHOTO TUTORIAL

• Begin with your work station, have everything ready. What you will need:
• Stamping plate
• Stamper/scraper (scraper, you can use an old credit card or ID card, whatever floats your boat, if you don’t like the one Konad or Born Pretty provides)
• Polish
• Cotton ball/pad/Q-Tip soaked in acetone
• Something to go underneath your stuff, so that scraped polish doesn’t mess your table. I use cut out cardboard squares from boxes and what not, and toss them when they get too covered in old polish. Economical! 🙂

•  Apply polish to the side of your image
• Some people like to fill it in, but I find it just makes a bigger mess and uses up a lot of unnecessary polish. I like to put a glob on about 1/4 of it. Sometimes it’s a trial and error, figuring out how much polish will cover the whole image plate.
• You can also manipulate your polish and scraping to cover only certain parts of your image plate and even use several colors at once

• Scrape the polish over the image, from the inside of the plate to the outside so that the polish ends up on the cardboard/paper towel.
• I just like doing it this way, sometimes people scrape from the outside to the inside
• ALWAYS clean up between each stamp.
• Some people don’t, but I find that the engravings flood and I can’t even really stamp for the second time so it’s pointless. I always swipe over the plate and sometimes the stamper or scraper (if it’s built up too much polish) between every stamp

•  At this point you must MOVE like LIGHTNING.
• The polish will begin to dry rapidly

• In a rolling motion from one direction to the another, use the stamper end to pick up the image
• Don’t go back and forth
• Don’t press TOO hard (you will figure out for yourself what the acceptable pressure is) or the image will smear.

• Quickly line up the stamper to your nail
• Again, with a rolling motion, stamp on the nail.
• DON’T:
• Go back and forth
• Just slap it on, the image will peel back up
• It’s okay to press fairly hard, if your nail polish is completely dry, this will help the image transfer better. 
• Practice with this step! You can stamp on a piece of paper to test out various possible stamping polishes, or your general technique. I recommend this, so you don’t ruin your manicure. Also if you’re a novice stamper, stamp over old manicures right before you plan to take them off, so if you ruin it, no big deal.

 Final result! This kind of sucks, I was going very slowly and as a result some of the dots never transferred properly, but hey, it comes with the territory of making a tutorial 🙂 So you see all that stuff around the cuticles? What do you do with them? Here is my final step.

 Clean up!

• In this photo I use a Q-Tip. I’m just showing the options available. Myself, I use a brush dipped in acetone. I’ve heard a lot of people say eyeliner brushes are the best but I have yet to try this. 
• Pointed Q-Tips will work a lot better than this one though. You can see the lint wanting to get everywhere 🙂
•  

You will notice I never use Konad Special Polishes. In an upcoming post I will be discussing stamping polishes. 🙂

Stamping Tutorial!

• First you need to have a good, safe area for stamping. You will make a mess. I like cutting out pieces of cardboard and using that as my stamping area, but I’ve seen some people use paper towels.
• It’s okay to press kinda hard when transferring the image to your nail, sometimes it works best that way. 
• You must work QUICKLY. I can’t stress this enough.  You’ll find what speed you need, and it always varies on the polish. 
• Sometimes they say you should rough up the ends with a emery board file so that it’ll pick up the image better. Personally I don’t see the big deal or purpose in it. The texture still feels the same.
• ENSURE your nail polish base is dry! You don’t necessarily need a polished base, but if you do, make sure it’s completely dry and can handle being pressed upon on. We don’t want the polish bunching up and sliding, do we?
• You need lots of patience! It will suck the first few times then when you get it, it’s so easy and fun 🙂 
• For the first few times it’s good idea to practice stamping over your old manicures, because if it sucks horribly you can just scrap the whole thing, no big deal. 

————————————————————————–

STEP BY STEP PHOTO TUTORIAL

• Begin with your work station, have everything ready. What you will need:
• Stamping plate
• Stamper/scraper (scraper, you can use an old credit card or ID card, whatever floats your boat, if you don’t like the one Konad or Born Pretty provides)
• Polish
• Cotton ball/pad/Q-Tip soaked in acetone
• Something to go underneath your stuff, so that scraped polish doesn’t mess your table. I use cut out cardboard squares from boxes and what not, and toss them when they get too covered in old polish. Economical! 🙂

•  Apply polish to the side of your image
• Some people like to fill it in, but I find it just makes a bigger mess and uses up a lot of unnecessary polish. I like to put a glob on about 1/4 of it. Sometimes it’s a trial and error, figuring out how much polish will cover the whole image plate.
• You can also manipulate your polish and scraping to cover only certain parts of your image plate and even use several colors at once

• Scrape the polish over the image, from the inside of the plate to the outside so that the polish ends up on the cardboard/paper towel.
• I just like doing it this way, sometimes people scrape from the outside to the inside
• ALWAYS clean up between each stamp.
• Some people don’t, but I find that the engravings flood and I can’t even really stamp for the second time so it’s pointless. I always swipe over the plate and sometimes the stamper or scraper (if it’s built up too much polish) between every stamp

•  At this point you must MOVE like LIGHTNING.
• The polish will begin to dry rapidly

• In a rolling motion from one direction to the another, use the stamper end to pick up the image
• Don’t go back and forth
• Don’t press TOO hard (you will figure out for yourself what the acceptable pressure is) or the image will smear.

• Quickly line up the stamper to your nail
• Again, with a rolling motion, stamp on the nail.
• DON’T:
• Go back and forth
• Just slap it on, the image will peel back up
• It’s okay to press fairly hard, if your nail polish is completely dry, this will help the image transfer better. 
• Practice with this step! You can stamp on a piece of paper to test out various possible stamping polishes, or your general technique. I recommend this, so you don’t ruin your manicure. Also if you’re a novice stamper, stamp over old manicures right before you plan to take them off, so if you ruin it, no big deal.

 Final result! This kind of sucks, I was going very slowly and as a result some of the dots never transferred properly, but hey, it comes with the territory of making a tutorial 🙂 So you see all that stuff around the cuticles? What do you do with them? Here is my final step.

 Clean up!

• In this photo I use a Q-Tip. I’m just showing the options available. Myself, I use a brush dipped in acetone. I’ve heard a lot of people say eyeliner brushes are the best but I have yet to try this. 
• Pointed Q-Tips will work a lot better than this one though. You can see the lint wanting to get everywhere 🙂
•  

You will notice I never use Konad Special Polishes. In an upcoming post I will be discussing stamping polishes. 🙂

a-england Camelot

Base color: a-england Camelot
Stamping color: Sally Hansen Chrome in Lilac Sapphire
Bundle Monster plate

a-england Camelot

Base color: a-england Camelot
Stamping color: Sally Hansen Chrome in Lilac Sapphire
Bundle Monster plate