Today, I have a victory to share with you! Today, I defeated two long-standing adversaries, and I did it with brain power! My conquests were French tip stamping, and my XL squishy stamper; they mock me no more! I rarely use the Frech tip stamping images in my collection, one because my nails have been short and two because I can never line them up properly. But since my nails are a little longer at the moment (thank you Duri-Rejuvacote!) I wanted to try a funky French on them. I thought, if I could line up the image and then press my nail into it, rather than pressing the stamp onto my nail or rolling it on, I'd stand a better chance of getting it straight, but the only problem with that is my nails are too curved and I'd inevitably miss the sides or blur the image. Enter squishy stamper - if I could get it to work, I could press my nail right into it and hopefully not mess up. But, my squishy hates me. I can usually get it to work for one or two goes, then it stops, or only partially picks up the image. So I babied it. I made sure it was totally clean by sitting it on an acetone-soaked cotton pad for a while, then was careful not to touch the surface when I put it back in the holder. In between stamps I cleaned the excess by pressing it against a lint roller and not using acetone, and pressed super lightly when picking up the image. I even cleaned my image plate every other stamp - unless it's a really stubborn image I can usually get away with only cleaning it between hands but I guess by pressing lightly it leaves more polish on the plate? Anyway, it worked and once I'd got the image on the stamper it was easy to line it up and get the tip image in the right place.
The resulting manicure? Well, actually I was less than enthused about it - I think the solid silver of the stamp isn't quite right with the jelly glitter of the base, but I hope you'll agree the stamping at least lines up! The base is one coat of 2True Crystal Shade 3 (super deep, glitter packed jelly) over one coat of Orly Shockwave. The stamping is done with Barry M Silver Foil and Bundle Monster 217, for a mermaid-y look.
I'm so pleased I worked out my squishy, and I'm hoping I can now line up my stamps better :) Now I just have to work out if I can line it up for double (and triple) stamping so I can get this image to cover my full nail...we shall see!
Have you had any successful stamping lately?
Hx
Love this!
ReplyDeleteI love my squishy stamper - it took a while to get used to (the texture *shudder*), but I use it all the time now.
I also press my nail into the stamper - generally I've had much straighter, centered results with it!
cute <3
ReplyDelete