Mirror Image Stamping with Home-Made Decals

Sometimes when I stamp my fingernails, it annoys me that the stampings on the other hand aren’t mirror images.  I know that some image plates Do have mirror images of some of the designs, but I don’t have any of them.  So I thought that I would try a home-made decal to see how it would work.  First, I painted a layer of clear nail polish on a plastic sandwich bag and let it dry overnight.  Then, on the layer of clear nail polish, I stamped my design, and let that dry overnight.  Then when I polished my nails, I stamped my left hand as usual, and put my home-made decals on the right hand.

Here’s how I did it:  When I painted the clear nail polish on the plastic bag, I did two areas, since I was going to stamp two nails, that were a little larger than the image that I was going to stamp.  I wanted to try to stamp two different colors, so I stamped in the reverse order that I was going to stamp directly on my fingernails.  When I was going to stamp my left hand, I wanted to stamp the white first, and then stamp over it with the gold.  So – I stamped the gold first on the plastic, and then stamped the white.  These two colors actually didn’t work together very well, so next time I will just use one color – it will be easier.

Then when I polished my fingernails, and I had stamped my left hand as I planned, I took my tweezers and teased the edge of the clear polish off of the plastic.  Then, using the tweezers, I carefully peeled the image off of the plastic.  As it turned out, the decal was quite a bit larger than my fingernail, so I cut off all of the extra clear polish around the edges of the stamped image with my scissors.  Then I put another layer of my color on my fingernail, and very carefully with the tweezers, and making sure that it was the right way up to be a mirror image, placed the decal on my nail.  I carefully used the flat edge of the tweezers to gently pat the decal onto my nail, making sure not to dent or mark the polish.  I took a deep breath and let it dry a while, and then put on my top coat.

For my left hand, I used OPI Schnapps Out Of It! for the two accent nails, and Don’t Talk Bach To Me for the other three.  I reversed the colors on my right hand, and then I put a coat of Essie As Gold As It Gets on all of the non-accent nails.  For the stamp I used Konad White and topped it with Nicole by OPI Not A Gold Bigger, and Image Plate Konad m82.  The gold doesn’t show up very well, you can hardly see it in the pictures, but even so, this is my favorite manicure so far using these two polish colors.

Here’s my left hand.

OPI Don’t Talk Bach To Me and Schnapps Out Of It! and Essie As Gold As It Gets
Stamp – Nicole by OPI Not A Gold Bigger, Konad White, and Image Plate Konad m82

Here’s my right hand.  I wish that my left hand could take better pictures – lol!

OPI Don’t Talk Bach To Me and Schnapps Out Of It! and Essie As Gold As It Gets
Stamp – Nicole by OPI Not A Gold Bigger, Konad White, and Image Plate Konad m82

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