Hello again 😊. So this week I decided to try out nail stamping. I bought a bunch of plates from Bundle Monster a few months back, but have yet to get the hang of it. Every time I try stamping I always end up picking up only half the image or no image at all. But I refuse to give up. Today we will conquer nail stamping!
Since I already knew what stamping plate I wanted to use, I didn’t search for too much inspiration. Instead I googled the specific plate (BM-608) to see if anyone did anything extremely creative with it. Unfortunately Bundle Monster no longer sells the plate, and also not too many people have posted pictures of what they’ve done with the wood grain part of it. I did find this cute and subtle post from @siljesnaglar on Instagram. I like that the wood grain isn’t very noticeable, so I’m going with this look/feel.
What I used:
- Base Coat: Glisten & Glow – Stuck on Blu!
- 1st Color: Essie – Sand Tropez
- 2nd Color: Glisten & Glow – Frosty Camel
- Top Coat: Glisten & Glow – HK Girl
- acetone nail polish remover
- Twinkled T clean up brush, size #2
- Bundle Monster BM-608 stamping plate
- silicone stamper
- polish scraper
- lint roller sheet
So I started off with the usual base coat, and then one coat of the Essie – Sand Tropez. As I was putting on that first coat of color though, I realized that I’m at the bottom of my San Tropez bottle. With every nail I did, I was worried that I might not have enough, and even debated switching colors while I still had the chance. Even with that fear, I kept going on to a second coat. I had to close and re-shake the bottle for each nail, but it worked. (Can you tell I was feeling stubborn?)
Once my nails were safely dry, it was time to start stamping. Since every Youtube video I’ve watched says that you need to work quickly I got everything set up how I liked it, and then I forgot the lint roller (to clean off the stamper quickly & easily), so I had to run and grab that out of the other room. Once I was sure that I was ready, I took a deep breath, placed the polish on the plate, scraped, and stamped. And it worked! Perfectly, actually. The stamping gods must have had pity on me, because I didn’t have very many issues picking up the image from the plate. That, or I finally had a good polish for stamping (Glisten & Glow for the win).
The biggest issue I had was that once I placed the stamp on my nail, little strings of the polish would lift back up and fall on the pattern. I’m still not sure if I was taking too long, being too rough, or it was just how this stamp design worked. It was annoying because it ruined the perfect image that I had picked up, but you can only tell if you’re closely scrutinizing my nails, and I was not about to redo all of them.
A slightly more annoying aspect of doing my nails this week was that I only owned one plate like this (like most people). But that meant that each time I stamped a nail, I would have to clean it before moving on the next one. It took even longer than I planned since after the first two nails were successful I decided it’d be a great idea to do all of them.
Sadly, tragedy struck when it was time to put on the glossy top coat. I was so incredibly happy that a stamping experience turned out well that I got sloppy… My genius self TOUCHED MY SWEAT PANTS, literally the second after putting on top coat 😭. It’s quick dry, but nothing is that quick. I let it sit for a minute and debated on what to do, go back and redo my thumb or just apply top coat again and leave it alone? I left it alone. I like how my boyfriend phrased: It makes them look like vintage hardwood floors. Since they’ve got some fade and are worn out.
They took me about three hours to finish, just like last week. But this week, most of the time was due to having to clean the stamping plate over and over again. Even with the little strings and worn out mistakes, I’m still proud of them. And I’ve been thinking about maybe adding a little extra bling or something so they’re not so plain, but I need to stop while I’m ahead.
Let me know about your experiences with nail stamping. Did you have better or worse luck?
Update:
In general I did really good this week! I only really picked at my thumb nail, which is a weird accomplishment to say out loud 😂. So Monday night while I was cleaning up my room I somehow chipped my thumb nail. But it was late, so I didn’t have time to repair it until Tuesday after work. I simply filled the chip with some more Sand Tropez, in the hope that I would ignore it and not make it any worse. Of course that was all wishful thinking, and the next morning I immediately picked it back off, plus some. Luckily though, I kept it to just that, and I’m weirdly proud of myself for it.
Weekly Nail 