Friend’s Fingers Friday – Social Stamping

This is the first of a recurring feature I expect to have, Friend’s Fingers Friday. Once a week, my friend Sandra comes over and I do her nails. She has no patience to sit at home alone to do her nails by herself, but once we turn it into a social thing, she rather enjoys it. She loves having me do stamping on her nails, and I harass her about her nails being too long for my stamper and how she needs to moisturize more. I get the benefit of being able to use more of my untrieds, and getting to do more nail art without changing my manicure every day. See more after the break.

This week I had just gone overboard at the drugstore with picking up a bunch of polishes, and Sandra zeroed in on two of them from the Bonita Salon Witches Ball collection. She also loved the look of the matte stamping from the Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Halloween collection that I swatched earlier this week, and so we had our starting point.

The base consists of Bonita Salon Wicked Good Time (green metallic) and Bonita Salon Lacquer Treats (satin orchid shimmer). I used Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Scaredy Matte to stamp over it, and had quite a bit of difficulty. I don’t know if it was because it was quite hot in my apartment, or if the extra time I needed to place the stamp on someone else’s nails was the problem.

I actually ended up going ahead and stamping over my own nail art just to see if it was a problem of the polish I was stamping over or with. Of course, the first attempt stamped perfectly over my thumb. I was already planning to take off the manicure in the evening, so I wasn’t too upset about it. The cat below is what she had originally chosen for her nails.

We decided on the stamp you’ve seen on her nails above, which ended up being perfect for an interesting distressed look. This is from CICI&SISI plate #15 which I got on Amazon in the yellow set, set 3.

In the interest of preserving the manicure while I nag her to moisturize, we decided to topcoat over the matte. We noticed that there still seemed to be a matte quality to the polish under the shiny top coat, which we both thought was interesting, and made it worth the effort of struggling with trying to get enough of the image to transfer onto the nail.

Have you ever decided to just go with it when your nail art isn’t working out the way you’d like? Let me know what you think of our efforts in the comments!