Cara Loves Nails!: 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!!