I hope you have all had an amazing Christmas and got some of those goodies you asked Santa for.
I love stamping. Its such an ingenious way of creating gorgeous and intricate designs perfectly, but can the stamper you use really make a difference to the quality of the image printed on your nails?
For a long time, I have been using a cheapy stamper I bought on eBay when I first started stamping, and I really never thought it would be any different to other stampers on the market, They all pretty much look the same, so how could they make a difference to the image on my nails.
I had problems with the quality of certain designs before but always thought it was because I didn’t have any proper stamping polishes, so I bought a set of stamping polishes from Born Pretty Store (this set here) and quickly realised that the designs weren’t stamping onto my nails any better. Then this years plate collections came out, and more and more designs were much more detailed than before and it was becoming near impossible to get a full stamp on my nail without niggly imperfections. It had to be the stamper.
I had a little browse on some of my favourite blogs to see if I could work out which stampers were being used the most, and in the end I decided to go for the 2 that I deemed most popular at the moment.
The Konad Double Side Stamp Set for £5.11 (in the middle) and the Moyou London Stamp Set £3.04 incl. postage (on the right), both from Amazon. The stamper to the left is the cheapy one I have been using for a while.
These are the items I will be using in this post, the 3 stampers to compare, the black Born Pretty Stamping Polish and Bundle Monster plate BM-415 from the Create Your Own Plate Set.
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| Konad, Moyou,Cheapy |
Here is a side by side of the pads on the stampers, as you can see, they are quite different. The Konad stamper has kind of a matt finish and is only slightly squidgy. The Moyou stamper has a very shiny surface and is very squidgy and the cheapy one is a matt finish and is almost solid.
The handles are all different too and I found this can also make a difference. The grip is very important when stamping as you do not want the stamper to slide, this would spoil the image straight away.
The cheapy one has a short, dumpy handle which can be quite difficult to grip onto.
The Konad one has a long handle which decreases in width towards the top and has 3 indents on either side giving you a good idea of where to position your fingers for the best grip.
The Moyou one has a medium length handle, which dips in towards the middle and had one indent on each side, presumably for one finger and your thumb.
Out of all of these, I found the Moyou one hardest to grip well, this however will be down to individuals preferences.
I chose Bundle Monster BM-415 because the chipboard design is one of the ones I have had problems with, the thin lines on the design seemed to be the parts that just wouldn’t pick up completely on the stamper. I also used the little robot for the small end of the Konad stamper.
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| Cheapy,Moyou, Konad and Konad mini end. |
This is how the images picked up onto the stampers. You can see by this that the Konad actually picked up the whole design and that the Moyou picked up the least amount of the design, and to get this much of the design picked up on the Moyou, I had to run an emery board over the pad each time I stamped or it would have been nothing, which was a bit annoying. The cheapy stamper was in between, with less imperfections that the Moyou but with plenty missing.
Once again, on the nails, it is evident that the Konad picked up the whole design and, had I stamped straight, the design would be perfect. Moyou has the most missing and the cheapy one has only a few bits missing.
After this, I have decided that it is definitely worth paying a few extra pennies to get the best stamper for the job, which as it turns out is the Konad stamper, and, that a different quality of stamper can really make a difference to the quality of the stamped image.
Of course the Konad is double ended which makes it worth the money even more. The small end picks up the image just as well as the larger pad but makes it easier to position those small, individual images on the nail. I would highly recommend purchasing this if you use stamping plates a lot.
I feel like I have used the words ‘stamper’ and ‘design’ quite a lot in this post but hopefully you have enjoyed my babbling on the subject.
:)x
