Nail Stamping - Fail or Success?

First of all, I want to start with the fact that I had given up....You may ask on what, let me tell you - I had given up on my nail stamping image plates and all that goes with it!


Around May this year, I got hooked on Youtube videos and blogs that reviewed/gave tutorials/showed photos of anything to do with nail stamping. I thought it was fantastic, as my freehand drawing is not up to par with the professionals. The concept of the stamping is great, so I purchased a BUNCH of stuff related to nail stamping including:


- Set 1 of Bundle Monster image plates (21 image plates)
- Set 2 of Bundle Monster image plates (25 image plates)
- Several Konad image plates
- Stampers and scrapers
- Special Konad stamping polishes


Now I bought all this because I loved the concept of nail stamping. I was so excited when my packages arrived in the post!! I couldn't wait to get home and try it all! I took photos of everything (let me know if you'd like to see them!) and then tested out a few images...


Well, I wasn't impressed. The images weren't transferring from the stamp to my nail. If they did, it placed less than half on my nail, and the colour was faint. I watched Youtube tutorials and read blogs about how to fix the problem. One popular solution was to file the stamps down before use to help pick up the images...FAIL! It didn't work. I just used a standard nail file from the shops.


Over the past few months, I've been busy with wedding and honeymoon planning, so the nail stamping was put on the back burner...Now that time permits, I decided to try again last night. Without fail, the images still didn't transfer probably. 


My one last attempt was to use a white buffer block (purchased from eBay a couple of months ago) to file the stamp. I went through the steps again: polish on image, scrape, stamp image and place on nail....I nearly fell off my chair when it actually transferred to my nail with 100% colour - SUCCESS!!


Not completely believing my luck, I tested different images, different plates, different polishes and different scrapers and they all worked too!!!


Now I can't wait to play with my nail stamping tools and experiment with different looks! If you've had a similar experience, use my motto: if in doubt, eBay has the answers!