Guest Post by A Girl and Her Polish

Good Morning Owlets!

Today's guest post is by A Girl and Her Polish. She is the Queen of Dotticures! Her nail art and stamping are fantabulous! And today she's given you some awesome techniques--owl style! ;)

Thank you so much A Girl and Her Polish! :)

Don't forget to check out her blog after reading this post!

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Hello Everyone!!  I was so excited when Kirsten asked me to do a guest post for her!  I feel really lucky that I have gotten to know her in the past couple months.  She is an awesome nail blogger and person! :)

Okay...on to the nails!  Many of my readers have contacted me about stamping.  They want to know how to do it, why it won't work, tips, etc.  I decided that this would be the perfect opportunity to share my stamping techniques.  Plus I just got the brand new Bundle Monster plates and they have the perfect design for this post!

When stamping the first thing  to do is gather everything you will need.  You have to be fast with stamping and running to get the things you need will lead to a frustration.

My Tools:

I have my polishes, Orly Decades of Dysfunction, Barry M Denim and I later added Barry M Raspberry, not pictured.  My stamping tools are my plate, stamper and an old Starbuck's card that I use to clean the plate.  My clean-up tools are a make-up brush and cuticle pusher.  Not pictured are my Q-Tips, acetone in a small glass (for clean-up), and paper towels that I put the plate on while stamping.

The plate I am using, BM309 is perfect because it is an owl stamp!  So cute!

Before I get started with polish I use a Q-Tip dabbed in acetone to clean my nails and the plate.  Everything always works better with a clean palette!  I also always use a base coat, which changes depending on my mood.  My go to base coats are butter LONDON Nail Foundation and OPI Nail Envy.

For today's design, after my base coat, I added 2 coats of Orly DoD.  I love this polish.  It's a dirty white with a pink tone and yes, it's from the Dark Shadows collection.  For some reason I had bubbles with this application, so annoying!

You want to make sure that your base polish dries before stamping.  I don't recommend using a fast drying top coat.  The tackiness of the polish helps pull and hold the stamp to your finger.

Alright, the actual stamping.  You want to make sure that the polish you are stamping with is opaque in 1 coat.  You don't have to buy the special stamping polish! A nice thick polish is all you need.  Place some on the stamp, scrap off the excess using a plastic scraper, like my Starbucks card.  You can purchase a plastic scrapper, but I'm sure you have extra plastic cards laying around somewhere. In picking up the stamp, I have found that firmly pushing down works better than the roll method. DON'T move the stamper around or you will smear the stamp. Just push down.  Once you have the stamp on the stamper, roll it on your nail.  You need to move quickly through these steps because the polish will dry fast.  You don't always have to clean the plate between each stamp, it usually depends on the polish.  Sometimes it works better when you leave the extra polish on the stamp.

My nails after stamping:

After I cleaned up my nails I decided to add some accent dots, using the same colors.

Lastly, you want to add your top coat.  It is always a good idea to give your polish time to dry or else it can smear.  Some top coats are horrible with stamping and will always smear, typically the thinner ones like butter LONDON Hardwear.  I have recently started using HK Girl which is AMAZING!! I have not experienced any smearing with this polish, it's fast drying and has a great shine.

My finished product:

Stamping can be a very difficult and frustrating technique to master.  It took me awhile to get good at it.  My best word of advice is practice.  The more you practice the better you will get at it.  Don't give up, you will get the hang of it! 

If you have further questions please feel free to contact me through my blog. I am more than happy to help those who want to learn this technique! 

Thanks Kirsten for letting me share with your readers! :)