When done competently, stamping can give you awesome results – details so fine that even the most practiced nail artist would need to take their time doing, geometric precision, and a huge time saving. When done badly, you are left with frustration, a destroyed base mani, a whole lot of clean up on your desk from all your failed attempts.
My name is Relle, and I am a stamping numpty.
I have tried stamping on and off for the past two years, and have had mild success with individual images, but the ability to apply whole nail patterns continued to escape me. It wasn’t until I followed the awesome stamping series by Tara of
Loki’s Lacquer last month that I realised that I had to break up with my stamper. It was a case of “it’s not me, it’s you”, with the curve of my nails not liking the rigidity of the normal Konad stamper. It was great for the small images, but whole nail designs never transferred properly and was difficult to line up properly. I needed some squish. That was why when
Born Pretty Store offered to send me some more products for review, I selected some new stamping related items.
Born Pretty Store Stamping Products
Today I am sharing with you four Born Pretty Store products, being a squishy stamper and scraper set, a silver stamping polish, and two stamping plates with “whole nail” patterns.
Affiliate links to these products:
4 Mixed Patterns Nail Art Stamp Template Image Plate BORN PRETTY BP21
As I mentioned above, my previous attempts at stamping were done using a rigid Konad stamper, so I was really excited to see if using a squishy stamper improved my results.
The stamper is a two-piece, and you can remove the squishy white part should you need to. The squishy part had a slightly glossy finish, and was easy to get in and out of the holder. It stays put so I wasn’t worried about it dropping out. I didn’t find any sharp edges of the moulded plastic, and it was a comfortable size and shape to use. The stamper surface is quite squishy, and I was easily able to press my nail into the stamper. The scraper is of a similar quality to the Konad scraper I have, and the metal edge was smooth and didn’t scratch the plates.
 |
| Comparison shot of my thumb and the stamping surface |
I tested the stamper, scraper, polish and plates by stamping images onto paper. I didn’t include a photograph of this as I was quite messy, and the images weren’t picking up entirely. I then decided to
prime the stamper by lightly rubbing the surface a few times with a magic eraser, and this improved the images dramatically.
Also, I don’t like using scrapers and instead use old store rewards cards. Once I had primed the stamper, and swapped to my favourite card scraper, the images were picking up perfectly. I’m not saying that the scraper wasn’t working, just that I personally don’t like using scrapers and get a better result with a store card.
In my stamping arsenal, I also have a lint roller – the type with the sticky tape roll. To clean my stamper, I just press it onto the lint roller and it takes all of the excess polish off. Super easy way to get a clean surface every time, and you are not damaging the stamping head with chemicals.
The silver stamping polish is a shiny “new silver” metallic foil, and comes in a sturdy bottle. The brush was secure in the lid of my bottle, and is fairly generous in the bristles department making it is easy to apply both to the stamping plate, and directly to the nail. The polish itself is quite opaque, and was quite easy to use both as a stamping polish, and directly on the nail. Also, this stamping polish smells like ordinary nail polish. There are some stamping polishes on the market that have very strong odours, but this one is fairly benign. I did get some faint brush marks when I applied it directly to the nail, but they are hard to see because of the metallic shine, and it was a one-coater over the top of Big Smoke, a shimmery navy blue from Butter London.
Stamping Plates
These stamping plates arrive with a blue plastic film over the top to protect from scratches during transit. The plastic is easy to remove, and the edges were finished fairly smoothly. I was able to run my fingers around the edge lightly and squeeze the plate’s edges without risk of cuts. The plates are of good thickness, and did not feel like I would accidentally bend them, unlike some other cheap plates I have in my collection. The images were etched well, and I could pick up the images well once I primed my stamper.
I will be doing separate in-depth reviews of these plates in the coming week, but for now since we are testing the stamper and the polish already, we’ll take a little look at the plates now.
Plate BP 21 has four whole nail patterns, which I’m going to refer to as waves, baroque, lines, and circles for the sake of this review.
In testing, I found the waves and lines were a little harder to pick up as their lines are so fine. A little more care will need to be taken in application if you are hoping to line the images up across your nails. The circles and baroque patterns picked up well, and due to the nature of their patterns, you can be a little looser with lining up your patterns if you want. I went for a random look to my circles, and was really happy with how they turned out.
Plate BP 55 has three whole nail patterns, with one quarter being a mix of things. It is described as petal designs, however for the sake of ease I’m going to refer to them as flower, art nouveau, tribal, and random mix. I found the easiest patterns to use were the flower and art nouveau, and the plant side of the random mix quarter. Due to the large etched out areas of the tribal quarter, and the mountain/clouds, I had a little difficulty getting enough polish to the plate to fill in these sections.
I have to admit I’m also a little confused with that random mix corner of the plate. I see mountains, snow, rain, clouds and then a pod of peas, and a weird little tribal triangle. On the other side of that quarter, there appears to be candle flames, a mix of mini borders in a block, and a flower/plant section. The random quarter doesn’t seem to relate to the other patterns on the plate, and I doubt I will use that section of the plate in the future.
I tried out the art nouveau pattern on my left hand, and it turned out great. Unfortunately my left hand is uncoordinated, doesn’t know how to pose, and is not even mildly photogenic so I apologise in advance for the awkward hand poses.
This pattern is finely detailed, and there were some tiny details that weren’t picked up by the stamper, however as it is so busy you don’t notice them. I went for a random placement on this hand too, as I wanted to see what the various sections of the pattern looked like.
Review Summary
All in all, I was very happy with these stamping products from Born Pretty Store. I definitely recommend getting your hands on the squishy stamper if you haven’t yet tried one, and it’s only US$2.99 at the time of posting this, with all orders through BPS having free shipping.
I also have a 10% off code for you all, so feel free to plug in my code LL10K31 at the checkout (10% off doesn’t apply for already discounted items).
Happy Polishing!!
xo Relle
These products were provided to me for review by Born Pretty Store.
This post contains affiliate links, which means I may receive commission of 5% if you make a purchase using these links.
Gauche Gal - Nails & Beauty 