Nail Stamping – First Try

In recent months I have started to see blog and Instagram posts about nail stamping plates and was incredibly intrigued once I saw my blog buddy Karen from Confetti & Curves share a tutorial . At the start of the summer, I ordered my own nail stamping plates (from the brand Pueen) from Amazon for less than $20, which I think is an amazing deal as it comes with 25 plates and 150 images! Luckily, I thought to order the rubber stamper and scraper because I thought to myself that it might be handy to have extras. Well, good thing I did because the stamping plates did not come with a stamper or scraper! In hindsight, the description didn’t say they were included but I guess I just assumed they would come with.

Anyway, I finally tried it out for the first time yesterday and while it did not go exactly as planned, I’m pretty satisfied with the result considering I’d never done it before.

So first I decided to use Essie’s “Ballet Slippers” and “All Access Pass”. I was going to do the baby pink shade as my base color and the purple for the design.

I decided to go with the simple floral design (the one all the way to the right).

So first you peel off the plastic covering from the plate and then cover the design with the nail polish. Then you use the scraper to scrape off the excess polish so that the polish is basically only in the grooves of the design.

Then, you press your stamper on the design and your design should transfer to the rubber stamper and then transfer to your nail. Seems easy enough, right? Wrong! Well, actually, yes it is pretty straightforward, however, this purple polish did not work at all! As evidenced below not a spot of purple transferred to the stamper at all. I thought I was doing something wrong or my plate was defective. Something! I tried at least 6-7 times with the purple polish on that floral design. Then, I tried a small heart that is on the same plate. Nothing. Then, I thought to try another polish and it worked easy as 1,2,3. So basically, I wasted nail polish and 20 minutes of my life trying to make this purple work. Long story short, apparently not all polishes work on these plates and I have no idea why. So the lesson here is if it’s not working on the first or second try, move on! It has nothing to do with the brand either because I ended up using Essie’s “Mint Candy Apple” so it’s not like Essie polishes aren’t compatible with the stamper or plate. I read some tips online saying that if the polish you are using is pretty opaque then it shouldn’t be an issue and I would think that “All Access Pass” would be a lot more opaque than “Mint Candy Apple”, so I’m not really sure why some polishes work and others don’t.

Anyway, as you can see  “Mint Candy Apple” transferred very nicely onto the stamper.

I stamped/rolled my finger against the stamper and it transferred with ease onto my nail.

Now, this was only my first time using a nail stamper so I’m not surprised it got all over my fingers! Plus, in my defense the stamper is so much larger than my nails. The whole process (once I got a polish that worked) was super easy and fun. And no biggie about it getting on your skin because that is easy to take care of.

I still have a bit of cleaning up to do around my cuticles but it’s already looking better than before. Although the flowers and leaves on my skin was a little pretty! The purple didn’t work out, but I think this light green/blue with the baby pink is a very sweet and demure combo. Loving this nail stamping kit already especially because I really enjoy being able to do something different with my nails and free-hand is not my strong suit.

Have any of you tried nail stamping? Any other polishes you know of that do not work on them?