5. Stamping

So your nails are ready for stamping. Here we go! :D

By the way....there is one thing they don't tell you, in an obvious manner: you need to peel the blue protective tape off the plate before using it. Just FYI!

Have your stamper out and ready. Do not touch it with your fingers as it will get greasy and dirty. If you've touched it or something is on it then tap it on the tape several times to get the stuff off. Stamp it onto masking tape or lint roller to clean it off. If it becomes terribly dirty you can wash it gently in a little liquid dish soap and water to clean it off. Don't dry it with a paper towel or anything that would leave residue on it. Just let it air dry. 

First, you painted your nails. So if you were just going to stamp a single design on, meaning not doing a decal or so much, just wait until the polish is close to dry. (Wait one to two minutes depending on how thick your coat was.) Now you're ready to stamp.

Have your scraping tool ready. 

1 - Take your stamping polish and apply a little bit completely over your first design, right onto the plate. You don't have to rush yet. 

2 - Turn your scraping tool at a 45° angle and swipe it across the top of the polish. Now you need to begin being pretty quick because it is thin and will dry really fast. Don't freak out and panic rush, but don't dawdle.

(If something happens and you take too long, and the image won't come up, just stamp the image off your stamper onto your tape, clean off the plate, and go again.)

3 - Pick up your stamper and gently roll the design off the plate with it. Do not smash it too hard into the plate. Do not gyrate the stamper around - That will get you a blurry image. Some people use an up and down method but I usually like the rolling method. It's a quick side to side rolling action.

If the polish underneath was not dry enough, and you smash and roll your design on, it is not going to come off well. If this happens do not worry. Just get some acetone, remove it all, and go again! It always gets easier with practice. This is why we call it practice!

I always turn the stamper head around and look at the stamp to make sure I am happy with how it looks on the stamperhead. This is how it's going to look on your nail. If you're not happy with it, you can blot it off on the tape and repeat the above before moving on to the next step. It might be easier to see against a dark background if it's a light image, or vice versa. 

 

If it doesn't look good, just clean the plate and try again. Sometimes certain polish doesn't work well. Sometimes it's the stamper. Sometimes it's even the plate. Plates with shallow designs, for example, require an extra sticky stamper head. This is why having a few different styles of stampers on hand is nice. Play around until you find what works. 

4 - Now take the stamper and roll the design onto your nail gently. That's it!

Do not "Hulk Smash" the stamper onto the nail - don't press really hard, in other words. It should be a pretty firm yet gentle stamp. It can take a few times to get a feel for the right amount of pressure to apply.

***Do NOT get frustrated and give up if you did not have success at first. Keep trying!!! Go look at some YouTube nail stamping videos. Check out the Maniology site and their videos. Join a Facebook group and ask questions. You'll get this!***

Remember that if the paint is too dry on the plate, or if the stamper head is dirty, you won't pick up the image off the plate onto your stamperhead.

I like the stamper that I can see through because I can then see exactly how the image is going to look on my nail by looking through the top of stamper. 

Do not double stamp your nail off the same scraping. Once you have put the stamper down on your nail and pulled it off, it is done. The stamper will need to be cleaned off on the tape. If something went wrong you'll either need to paint over your design and go again, artfully work it in, or just leave it alone. Your choice! Sometimes you can blend it in with some other stamps and make it a happy little accident. But after you have stamped, make sure to tap the stamper head on the tape several times to remove any leftover images. You don't want those carrying over to your next nail. 

If you're not happy with your design and want to redo it then stamp it off on the tape, clean the plate, and go again. 

If you pick up more of the design than you wanted to, and most of the time you will, what I like to do is use my tape to pull that extra image off before stamping the stamper head onto your nail. (They also sell a mini stamper at Maniology for picking up small images off a plate without having this issue. You might like it after you get the hang of this.) You can try what works for you, but I normally take the stamper down to the edge of my tape roll, pad it on the stamper head where undesired art is, and get rid of it that way. Some people bring a small piece of tape up to the stamper to grab the extras away. Sometimes if what I need to remove is very small I will put a piece of tape on something such as a q-tip and blot it off carefully from the stamper head. Again, you'll figure out what works for you as you get used to it.

You will need to clean the stamper plate before you use the painted area again. You don't have to do this right away unless you were using something that got polish on it. You can wait and clean everything all at once or clean it in between uses. Your choice. 

To clean your stamper plate take a cotton ball with acetone on it and wipe it off. I like to hold the cotton ball in a clothespin and then hold the clothes pin with my fingers so I don't get acetone on my fresh paint and ruin it. After I remove the design I like to pick up a paper towel and buff the plate off so there is no paint or acetone residue left behind. Make sure it's shiny again. You can also use a clean, dry cotton ball, but I feel like it leaves cotton fluff everywhere when I do this.

Something to consider is also using a separate paper towel to remove the excess polish from your scraping plate once you are finished. This helps prevent sticky buildup on the scraping tool which can cause a bad scrape. And you will quickly learn that a bad scrape means it will be a bad stamp. No one likes a bad stamp! You can use acetone to clean your scraping tool too, but once in a while you're just going to need to replace it with a new one. 

Tip!!! Don't acetone the plate on the paper towel where you're stamping. You are likely to end up touching acetone to your stamper head the next time you stamp there, which ruins the clear finish on the stamper head. Instead pick up the plate you need to clean, and perhaps put it on a different paper towel for cleaning! Buff it. Return the plate to your stamping area after cleaning.

Troubleshooting 

If your image looks streaked like this when you pull it off the stamping plate, you had too much paint on the plate, or you just didn't scrape enough away. Tap this off on the tape, clean the plate, and try again. On occasion you need to scrape a second time before using the stamper, if it looks really streaky on the plate because of too much paint remaining. Again, practice, practice, practice! You will get used to this as you go.

When you have finished stamping all your nails and you are happy with the art, it's time to put on a top coat. If you don't have the No-Streak top coat, you have to go through some extra hoops to make it work. For easy success when you are just getting started, just get the good kind from Maniology and use it. You can safely apply a layer of this over the top of your nails, to protect the paint. Now, when dry, you need to apply a layer of top coat/lacquer, and then you are done! The Smudge Free isn't a good final top coat because of how thin it is, and it's water soluable, but you could use any top coat now over this and be safe. 

If you use the wrong top coat on top of your stamping it may melt it. The Smudge Free Top Coat product prevents this! 

Finally, put a lacquer coat over the top once that's dry. Stamping polish (and no-streak or smudge-free top coat) dries really quickly. It's sort of the magic that helps make this all work. :)

Some people find a bad reaction between stamping something, and end up with bubbles in their polish. It is best in these cases to stamp a layer of top coat onto the nails instead of brushing it on.

Some people have found success using any clear top coat over the top of their stamping. They do this by gliding the brush over the paint and not running the brush against the paint. But again, if you want success before learning these more advanced techniques, just get the Smudge Free top coat!

Cleaning your stamper head https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DDPVHu9QgI