Saturday 14 December 2013

Stamping'ell!


If you follow me on Instagram you'll see I've gone a tad mad on stamping. I've found plates and a stamper that work flawlessly each time from www.moyoulondon.co.uk and for the first time I've been able to stamp with regular polish not just Konad special polish!
Firstly here's a few snapshots of my recent stamping with my MoYou London plates:








I thought I'd do a small tutorial on my stamping method as well. 


1. This is my stamping set up. I have a small box which I keep all my plates and stamps. It's big enough to work on whilst stamping and keep the polish close by as well as top coat and nail varnish remover. 
2. I choose my colours I'm going to use. 
3. Paint a base coat of chose colours on both hands. Add top coat and allow to fully dry before stamping. 
4. Choose your plate. I chose MoYou London festive plate 06. 
5. I then chose the exact design I wanted. 
6. Time to start stamping!! Start from the bottom of the design and put a thick line of polish along the full edge of the design. 
7. Take your scraper and at a 45* angle press firmly and quickly scrape the polish along the etched area. 


1. Take your stamp and press firmly on the design. 
2. Position the stamp over your nail and press firmly. You have to work quickly to make the stamp adhere properly. It takes some practice but I found using an extra squishy stamper works best!
3. Take your clean up brush tidy up the edges of your nail. 
4. I do all the same colour at once, then if I have a complimentary colour I do this after. 
5. Clean up as you go along, it makes it easier after!
6. Add top coat and you're good to go!

I'm loving all my stamps from MoYou London and doing as many designs as I can to try each design! I hope you enjoy my stamping attempts and my very basic tutorial. 
I'm hoping I can get a computer set up soon to make my blog more attractive but at the minute I've only got my phone or tablet and it's limiting :(

ENJOY! Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
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Monday 2 December 2013

Stamping Insanity

Stamping is one of those skills that evades most of us. It's been an enemy of mine for a long time now so believe me, I know. I bought a set of plates on amazon but the images were way too small for my nail, so I can only use a few of the smaller designs to stamp and layer up. Then I saw some plates on IG (Nail Craze) that I fell in love with and bought two of them, and spent night after night attempting every colour under the sun to see which polish worked. Eventually I caved and bought a black konad polish and WOW the difference! I practiced with this then went back to trying different polish. I found Lilypad Lacquer worked really well too and gave a pretty and subtle pattern. I now own three konad polishes, black, purple with shimmer and a silver/gold polish too. There are other colours I like but I'm slowly building up to different colours, I'd rather know the polish would work than spend hours in vain stamping away!
I've been holding out on this mani for weeks now! I've been wanting to do a red and gold mani since start of November but thought it was too early for such a Christmassy colour combo, especially with the design I had in mind!
I have my own little box where I keep my stamping tools and also did it useful for doing the actual stamping too as the plate doesn't slide (and I've recently covered it inside with Minion tape from my lovely friend Christina!) as well as this I have my nail polish remover dispenser and cotton balls to clean the plate, scraper and stamp after each nail. 
I began with a base of China Glaze "Just Be-Claws" from their new Christmas collection. 
The first night I began this is was an epic fail, four failed attempts and only three successful nails after an hour. It has been a while since I stamped, and I started at 1:30am (lesson learned!). The next day I tried again determined not to be defeated by this stamping malarkey again!

SUCCESS!! I did the remaining 7 nails with only one fail in less than an hour. Even my Cinderella hand was stamped (and I prefer this hand's finished look) most of my pictures are of my Cinderella hand which is unusual for me!
Without further ado here it is! 1st December, 1st Christmas Mani!!

Light Box Picture

Light Box Picture

Natural Light Picture

Hello "Christmas Jumper" nails! So hard to picture, more images are available on my IG (@cara_mia88)

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