Nail Stamping

So, a few weeks ago, I blogged about the new gothic nail stamps from MoYou. Here's the review.

This is my first time using this brand--most of my other stamps are Konad brand. Overall these were nice stamps. My lines weren't as clean as with the Konad designs, but these designs are pretty awesome.

Every nu-goth trend on one nail (Gothic stamp #6)

I'd say the reasons why the lines weren't clean were (and this is good stamping advice in general:

1) I was too slow. For clean lines, you kind of have to move fast, otherwise the polish starts drying and starts getting stuck on the plate or your stamper. A lot of the designs (like the garter above, the crosses, any French design) need to be aligned perfectly, which takes time. Every second you wait, the design gets sloppy.

2) too-thin nailpolish: I used the Essie brand nail polish black for all of these designs (the only black I own) and let me say that Essie is not all it's cracked up to be. It's super thin and doesn't lend itself to stamping. You can see in the belts above that it's kind of sheer. 1-coat nail polishes work best for stamping.

3) Designs with a lot of huge colored areas (like the graveyard below) are kind of tricky...you have to use the right amount of pressure when you scrape the plate (so you don't scoop out the dark areas) and which direction you scrape kind of matters. I found that I had a lot of excess polish creeping into the design, giving fuzzy lines and splotches.

First time ever the left hand is worse than the right. So, this nail polish is pretty terrible--it looks like whiteout.  I colored in the rose with a marker (still gothic plate #6)

plain shitty lighting. This hand has a sheer nude polish, which works really great with the designs. still gothic plate #6 the pentagram and cross are really cute on short nails. It's tacky as hell to have all different designs on all your nails, but I wanted to show the stamps. 

I'd actually wear these stamps as a design on one "accent" nail

'nother accent nail. I'm a pretty lady.

Gothic plate #4, which doesn't seem to be online anymore. most of these designs are on #3 and #5. The graveyard is super cool...want to do a french manicure set with it). The bats turned out awesome and I love the crow+fence. 

that illuminated manuscript one is awesome, as is the pattern on my middle finger. If you are new to nail stamping, I recommend doing a design like the one on my middle finger...you can move quickly, as it doesn't matter which way you align it, and the lines are thin. Thin-line designs are always neater...as you can tell by the stitches on my pinkie. Sorry bout the shit job on my thumb...I literally had enough of redoing that nail because I couldn't line it up straight.