I SUPER hate being disorganized.

I SUPER hate being disorganized. It messes with my brain in a bad way. So recently I did some research to find a good app to help me get my nail stamping plates in order. I found one called "Color My Life" that's meant for paper crafters, but it's working out surprisingly well for my purposes.

The app lets you tag your items so that you can find them easily. Some stamping plates have themes (like holidays), but others have random images or patterns so there was no easy way for me to organize those and later be able to find what I was looking for. The app also lets you add a location of where the items are stored for easy retrieval. Yesss. My brain is happy. 😁

I put a solid 7 days of effort into cleaning, organizing, tagging, and cataloging my nail stamping plates (I'm closing in on having 600 😬). Now I can search my plates in a variety of different ways and see where they are stored. I'm SO pumped about this because I haven't done nail art in so long. Part of it was because of college and then moving, but another big part of it was because I was overwhelmed every time I looked through my plate binders, which was the only way I had to see my plates or get ideas. 

Now if I'm feeling a dog mani I can just type "dog" in the app and see all of my plates with dog-related images. I can decide what works best for my idea and immediately know which binder it's stored in. I 👏 am 👏 so 👏 EX 👏 CI 👏 TED. 😂😂😂 Y'all really don't even know how stupid giddy I am right now. 😂

Since the app lets you have different categories of items I'm seriously considering adding my water-slide decals, nail wraps, stickers, and foils to the mix. I don't yet know if I'm going to do all of that, but I did add a few of my decals in and I think it makes sense. Anyway, we'll see. For now this is a great start. 😁

It's late so probably no one will see these...

It's late so probably no one will see these, but that is kind of ok.  🤣🤣🤣  I like them because I like puke colors and nature, but I know that is not everyone's cup of tea.  😜  Anyway, I've decided that these are leaf cells.  If you look closely you can see some mitosis happening.  Yay for biology!  And spring!  😄😄😄  (This totally counts as a spring mani, right?  😆)

Gradients look SO NICE, but I've never been that great at them.  The sponge method doesn't work well for me because my C-curve is so strong that the edges of my nails usually don't get coated in polish.  🙁  There is a new stamping plate out - Make Your Mark 03 by Lina Nail Art Supplies - that has a blank rectangle in it.  The first time I saw the plate was on Instagram and a girl was putting stripes of polish in it and then swiping a couple of times to mix them to create a gradient.  It turned out GREAT.  Needless to say I had to have it.

So my left hand (my practice hand) doesn't look quite as nice as this one, but I gotta say that this method is pretty effective for gradients.  The polish that gets picked up on the stamper is super thin so doing a few layers builds it nicely.

Weirdly, the only thing I ended up painting on these was topcoat.  I did three thin layers of white, and then 2 - 3 of my yellow / green mix, and then the pattern, ALL WITH THE STAMPER.  😳  If you don't like the feel of thick polish then maybe you would like this, but you'd need liquid latex or tape or something to keep from having to drench your skin / nails in acetone trying to clean up the mess (which is what I did - woohoo for not planning!)

I tend to like thicker layers on my nails because they are thin and I clean a lot because of all of my ani-pals, so thicker coats protect my nails and stay on longer.  My nails feel almost naked right now and I'm not down with it.  I keep also feeling like this whole mani is gonna flake right off so I decided to get a pic and post it before I destroyed them.

Anyway, what do you guys think?  Too fugly for spring?  😜😆🤣

There are not enough stickers...

There are not enough stickers in the whole of the Internet to properly express my excitement right now. MY ORDER NOT ONLY ARRIVED TODAY, BUT IT HAD FREE PLATES IN IT, TOO!!! AND CHECK OUT THAT FUCKING PRECIOUS PACKAGING, OMG. 😳

THESE ARE ABOUT TO BE MINE.

THESE ARE ABOUT TO BE MINE.  I am gonna have so much animals on my nails and probably on jewelry, too.  😳

For anyone who's interested in nail stuff...

For anyone who's interested in nail stuff (Nancy, Morgan), these are some of the stamping plates I've got so far.

I have a folder full.  Don't judge me.  They are cheap, some have been gifts, and I can re-use them forever.  😛

Bundle Monster set BM-301 - BM-325

Red Angel set RA-110 - RA-121

Mash set Mash-26 - Mash-50

Cheeky set CH30 - CH55

Winstonia set W101 - W120

I'm sorry, but this is NOT a comprehensive list.  I have a few random Konad's, some without a name, some weird ones I bought from ebay...  It would be hard to name them all.  But, the sets listed all work pretty well so if you're just starting out I would definitely recommend any of those.  Red Angel would be the bottom of the list, but that's because their full-nail designs are pretty small.  That's kind of a bummer.  😐

Most of these sets can be found on Amazon so just go on there and see which one has more images / designs that you like and then go for it.  Sometimes the photos are really too small to see well - so in that case look it up on YouTube.  People make videos showing the plates and usually do a short demo on how it works / how well the plates work so that would be really helpful.

Once you get your plates all you really need to purchase is a good stamper.  You can use an old gift card or whatever as a scraper and since it's plastic it won't scratch up your plates.  I hate with a passion the metal scrapers.  😳

Anyway, let me know if you have any questions!  If I've done a manicure with an image in particular that you like let me know and I'll look up which plate it's on for you.  🙂

I was the Nail-Stamping Fairy today.

I was the Nail-Stamping Fairy today.  😃  We got our package!!!  Woohoo!  I stuck Janet's goodies in the mail and dropped off Nancy's new stamper.  Shaun is coming to get his image plate shortly and I have a dilemma!  Do my nails tonight... or do them tomorrow when my China Glaze Magnetix polishes come in?  😳  Decisions, decisions.