"Hand-Painted" Flowers - Taking Stamping to Another Level!

Ok. The title sounds rather dramatic, I know. Well, I don't know about you, but I am not skilled enough to hand-paint my nails. I might be able to on my non-dominant hand but for my right hand? Forget it! That is why stamping is such a wonderful tool because you can put designs on both hands nicely. However, there are times you don't have the particular design plates for the look you are after. I have this beautiful iphone case that I wanted to match my nails to. I looked through my plates but couldn't find any that would match. And I thought I could hand-paint it on the stamper and stamp it on my nails!

This idea came from the direct decal method that I have been using recently. You can see the example here, here, and here. By the way, this method of making decals on stampers and stamping directly on nails have been around for sometime and people call it different names, such as advance stamping or reverse stamping method, etc. To me, those names quite don't stick. When I hear reverse stamping, I think of the method you stamp a design on one stamper and put another stamper to it to reverse the image and stamp on your nails. So, I just made up this new name "direct decal method" and I think it sounds more like what it is, no? 

Here is the picture of my iphone case and my matching nails! I really love the result!

You might think it is time consuming, but it was pretty quick to my surprise. You can use dotting tools or small art brushes to paint design. And if you have a few stamper heads around, you can paint multiples of them first because it needs to be fairly dry before placing it on nails. Just remember that the first color you paint would be on the top of the other color. For example, I put little yellow lines before red and pink flowers so that when stamped, you see little yellow centers on flowers. 

For this look, I first painted my nails with Essie Navigate Her (light green) and Sally Hansen Ivory Skull (white). On my left hand, I also painted one nail with Sally Hansen Floaties (peach) as an accent. I painted flowers on stampers, using Essie Navigate Her, Essie Vested Interest, Sally Hansen Floaties, and Essie Sunday Funday. I finished off with a couple of coats of HK Girl top coat to smooth things out. 

I am very happy with the "hand-painted" look! If you are like me and not confident enough to paint designs on nails directly, you should difinitely try this method!

Love,

Little Dot