Nail Stamping For Beginners - My First Foray In To The World Of Nail Art Stamping!

Hey there lovely readers!

Grab yourselves a cuppa dear ones as this is a bit of a one! As I'm sure is QUITE clear by now if you are a regular peruser of my blog & basically just by looking at my page...nail art is my passion. Nails, beauty, food & cats...pretty much in that order most of the time. But yus, nothing makes me happier than when I'm sat down at my work station (aka the dining room table) with all my nail art bits & bobs laid out in front of me ready to get to creating something fun on my nails. 

I mostly love experimenting & playing around when it comes to my nail art designs, some projects more successful than others! Let me tell you there is nothing more devastating for a nail artist than spending time on a design you had such high hopes for it to turn out an epic FAIL. However as much as I love getting arty with my brushes, I also like to delve further & try out different techniques. One such technique, which has been around for quite a time now is Nail Art Stamping & I'll confess...its one that has had me in palpitations at the thought of attempting.

But...after seeing so many beautiful looks on my IG feed using stamping, I felt it was time to rectify this situation. Thus when I saw Beauty Big Bang had an offer on this epic Stamping set at Xmas plus obtaining a hefty discount code (thanks @Hanninator!) I naturally snapped it up! In the set you receive a large stamping mat upon which to do your work, a clear jelly stamper plus scraper & a set of 10 different plates with a wide range of pretty designs to choose from!

Before I go into my experience with this set, let me just mention that I did previously pick up a couple of mini stamping kits when starting out, one from Konad (who I believe were the originals behind the stamping technique I think? Don't quote me on that though) & another from Moyou which is more well known.

Both these kits come with smaller versions of the stamper, scraper & also come with plates & stamping polishes. I think these are great if you are starting out, I first played with these for a good few months to build up my confidence & technique as it did take me a while to actually grasp it with many many MANY fails!

I think there were many reasons for my stamping fails (did I mention there were a few?) mostly down to the polishes I was using for the actual stamping. Hence why its good to get these small starter kits as they usually come with special stamping polishes already. 

However after a time I felt I was ready to up my stamping game, enter again my brand new stamping kit! As mentioned, with this Beauty Big Bang Kit you also receive a larger clear jelly stamper, which I've been itching to upgrade to as they are DEFINITELY better than the mini ones you get in the starter kits! With the stamper comes the accompanying scraper, however as you can see, an old credit card would do just as welll!

You also receive an epic 10 different stamping plates, a nice mixture of festive, floral & fun patterns to play with! Before starting its important to have all your bits that you need at hand. So as well as the mat, stamper & scraper, be sure to also have some kitchen towel down as well (to catch the excess polish after scraping) cotton wool/pads/buds & acetone/polish remover to clean your plate after each go.

So how did I get on? Well...it was a slow, stressful start let me tell you! 

I grabbed myself a bunch of polishes from Models Own, in particular the chromes as I really wanted to stamp in metallic, but...it turns out the chromes are NOT made for stamping, the formula being just too thin & refusing to be picked up by the stamper no matter how many times I tried.

So instead I switched it up with one of the cremes instead. As you can see I already had my base shade down, which is two coats of Models Own Oval Plum, a vibrant purple toned fuchsia pink creme with delicate shimmer running through.

I opted to use another Models Own creme, shade Emerald Green, a lovely turquoise green creme which also has a pretty shimmer. However as you can see this probably wasn't the best choice as it did not stand out very strongly against the pink! But the design DID pick up well with the stamper & transfer to the nail well so HUZZAH! Progress.

Drunk on what was my first proper success with nail stamping, I was itching to try again but this time pursue my original goal of metallic stamping! And it would seem the nail stamping gods were on my side & I was chuffed with how my next attempt came out!

For my base here I've used two coats of this duochrome I picked up in New Look called Petrol. I confess, the shade did look better in the bottle O_o What I thought would be a purdy beetle shell type duochrome colour, instead came out a bit more murky brown in tone...hey ho! 

But it was the stamping that was the focus here & for this I used a metallic silver by Formula X which I got in a set & turns out is PERFECT for stamping! The image transferred perfectly!

So I'm slowly but surely getting there I think, before you know I'll be a stamping wizard! I'm nothing if not determined when it comes to nail art :) 

Along the way I've found certain techniques work better, such as rolling the stamp across the plate when picking up the image rather than just pressing down. I definitely need to experiment with more polishes...see what formulas work better than others. I'm also going to do another Born Pretty Store haul I think & pick up some polishes that are specifically for stamping purposes as well as some more jelly stampers that have been recommended to me....that might be a good start!

Thanks for reading if you've made it this far! I anticipate lots of stamping mani's to come in the future so watch this space! If you have any tips, advice or questions about nail art stamping then do let me know!

Lotsa love to ya!