The Art of Nail Stamping (Sort Of) Part 1

My first venture in to the world of nail stamping was an epic fail. Not that I knew that at the time I was spending an obscene amount of money on new stamping plates some 3 years ago. I mean really I thought, how hard could this be? You apply polish to the plate, scrape, press your stamper down, apply it to the nail and hey presto! This would be a doddle. 

Oh, if only. 

Eventually after I worked out how to prep my stamper, thank you YouTube Vloggers, my next task was to work out how to get the correct angle when scraping without smearing all the polish I had across the plate and all over myself- I'm still a messy stamper mind, but least I can actually stamp now. Everyone spoke about this scraping at a 45 degree angle, I almost got my protractor out! But once I calmed down, reminded myself this was nail stamping and not a GCSE maths exam, it wasn't that hard to master after all, even with the chunky plastic scraper that had been sent alongside my hard as nails stamper.  

My next 'fun' obstacle was learning how to pick up the image on my rock hard pink stamper. Luckily it wasn't long before I discovered the rolling method, and I actually started to get excited. I've got this! I can stamp!

I know, I know, my overexuberant enthusiam was short lived when I realised that that was the easy part really. I still had to actually get the damn image on to the nail a) before the polish dried and b) get the image across the entire nail and not just down the centre. 

I thought I'd broken nail stamping. I thought there was something wrong with me. Why couldn't I do this? I'm no idiot, I was adulting just fine; I was a mother, a wife, a business woman, a nail tech and as far as I was aware, I was winning on all fronts there, so why couldn't I get this frikkin leopard print design on to my nails? 

I won't lie to you, this was my absolute nail nemesis at the time. I'm not one to give up on anything or let anything beat me, just ask my long suffering friends and family. But I did actually give up on this. My plethora of nail stamping 'baddies' got angrily shoved in to my nail drawer and didn't see the light of day for a whole year. 

Every beautiful nail stamping picture I saw on Facebook reminded me of my own shortcomings and made me jealous as hell. My nail art skills were basically zero at this point. Yeah, sure I could add a rhinestone or two, I was known as the Glitter Fade Queen, well by one of my nail besties anyway, I couldn't (and still can't) freehand nail art to save my life and for a moment I questioned whether I should even be a nail tech- Glitter Fade Queen/Drama Queen it's all the same really.  

So at 11pm one Friday night, I pulled my big girl pants up and got those special polishes and plates out from the recesses of my nail drawer, and told myself that I wasn't going to bed until I'd cracked this stamping lark.

Now don't laugh, but do you want to see my first ever stamping picture. The one where I declared to my 3 nail besties that I could stamp? Shield your eyes, and don't look directly at it, perhaps even squint a little.

This picture followed a Facebook status of "Please excuse the s**t nail polish (was trying out colours earlier), but third attempt at 23:45 and I think I can just about stamp!". Oh how I love my confidence. 

And really that's where it all began. From there on in, I discovered that you needed a good quality stamping polish or normal polish, the right kind of stamper, a feather light hold (don't vice grip that stamper), RELAX, have patience and you can always wipe it off and start again if it goes belly up- no one will judge you. I also learned to start with the metallics and hide the black and white stamping polishes from your clients until you'd really got your nail stamping repertoire down.

So you may well be wondering why have I written this blog post. Well, I just wanted to let you know that you can stamp. Everyone can. You may take to it like a duck to water or throw a hiss yfit like me, but you CAN and WILL do it. It just takes a little practice, patience and confidence and you'll smash it. Here's one of my most recent pictures. I'm sure you'll agree that this is a vast improvement on the monstrosity that I posted above.

Part two of this blog will be a little less of an overshare and more about how to actually stamp. I'll be posting hints and tips that I've picked up along the way and you may well find a quick video tutorial as well. 

Until then folks...

Take Care 

Laura x