Salon Express Nail Stamping Kit Experiments!

Yesterday I posted about a nail stamping kit I picked up at Rite Aid called Salon Express. I just wrote up a quick blurb about it because I hadn't had the chance to play with it too much. Well turns out being insomniac is really good for my blogging. I couldn't sleep last night and early this morning so I played around with this kit and did some experiments... This post is about the good, the bad, and the ugly of this kit:

This was the first thing I tried since the little tips insert that came with the kit said to use thick polishes. In my experience, the Insta-Dri are really thick so I used Mint Sprint for the base and Lickety-Split Lime for the stamping. I actually like how it turned out, the only thing is that it smeared when I put on a topcoat. I used a Barielle top coat and it smeared the index and ring fingers. Them I remembered that Seche Vite is best to use to prevent smearing and that's what I did for the rest of the designs:

This was the second thing I tried. I really don't like how this one came out. I found it really hard to get actual circles that weren't faded or oval shaped or something like that. I like the color combination I just need to play around with the dot design some more to get it to look like dots. Colors I used were Dream On from Sinful Colors as the base and Disco Dress from Color Club for the stamping.

After the dot fiasco, I thought of making a multi-color design to see how that would work. So I put down a base of China Glaze White on White and I decided to try to make multicolored butterflies. My index finger is smudged in this... I caught the topcoat bottle as I was taking pictures :(. I really like how this turned out, actually. I used all China Glaze neons: Flip Flop Fantasy, Kiwi Cool-ada, Sun Worshipper, Turned up Turquoise. What I did for this one was I just put a dab of each color on a different section of the butterfly and when I scraped it away, it mixed in a little bit. LOVE how this came out, I just need to work on placing the butterfly better.

And finally, the design I decided to do and keep on my nails. For this I used Sally Hansen Silver Sweep for the base and Wet n' Wild Black Creme for the stamping. This is my favorite of the experiments I did today. I apologize for the messy cuticles, its annoying when I have small fingers and the design is gigantic... I cleaned up my cuticles a little but I really wanted to photograph and post this because I love it so much!

Overall, I love this kit. It took a little bit to actually get it to work. Like I mentioned in the original post about this kit, I tried a few different polishes but none of those worked... thick and very pigmented polish is definitely the way to go! Also, one of my tips: the scraper in this kit is useless to me. It doesn't get rid of the excess well enough causing the design to smear when you stamp it on. I decided to use a razor blade instead and that works so much better! Also an obvious point but one that I didn't think of in my sleep deprived state: make sure your base color is DRY before attempting to stamp.

Very happy with this kit! So glad I decided to get it! I hope this was helpful to some of you!

Thanks for reading, until next time!