Tutorial: Stamped French Manicure

Hello!

I'm back with a tutorial on how to create your own stamped French manicure. :)

Step 1: Bend your French tip guide into submission. For ages I tried to use French tip guides to make French tips, and could never quite get it right--they would always come out lopsided. Finally the answer came to me--bend the darn thing in half so I have a midpoint I can reference, to place it on my nail correctly. Fold your guide in half (sticky side out, so it doesn't just stick together), and crease it so there is a line.

Step 2: Place that line onto the center of your nail, and then press the guide in place. The line will disappear as soon as you're pressing it into place, but that's okay, it has done it's job, which is to allow you to position the guide so that your tip won't be lopsided. :) I press my guide down into my cuticles (see picture) to help keep my polish from bleeding under the edges of the guide.

Step 3: Paint your tip white. To get the cleanest lines, paint in strokes that start on the guide and move toward the tip of the nail; if you brush from the tip of the nail up onto the guide, you are likely to get polish that bleeds under your guide and ruins your clean line.

Step 4: (Optional) Put topcoat over your nail. I do this to help speed drying time, and to help level the nail areas.

Step 5: Once your nail is completely dry, put your French tip guide back into place. However, you should leave a tiny gap, as seen below, between your tip and your guide--if you don't, your stamping won't reach to the bottom your white tip, and it will look like you stamped it wrong. This will allow your stamped design to reach all the way to the bottom of your white tip.

Step 6: Stamp your image onto your stamper, and make sure it has transferred well. You can use any shape image you want; I just happened to use a triangle-shaped image because it had the leafy design I wanted. If your image has a strange shape, it's okay, because your guide will catch any extra design and keep it from going on your nail.

Step 7: Roll your stamped image over your white tip and guide. Make sure your image is going over your entire white nail area, and that it doesn't go past the bottom of your nail guide (and onto the base of your nail!).

This is what it should look like when you're finished stamping:

Step 8: Finally, finish with a coat of topcoat, and you're done!

Voila! A thing of beauty (well, once you do your clean-up around the cuticles, lol!):

For ease of reference, I've compiled these into a single-image tutorial for those who prefer it that way:

I hope this has been clear--let me know if not and I'll add any information you need. Feedback is greatly appreciated, since I'm still figuring out how to do tutorials effectively!

Thanks, as always, for stopping by. Hugs and big smooches!
M.