Atomic nails

Next up in the poll is a simple image of an atom. It was along with the original wishes for this plate. Looking at the pack of images that I have for this plate, there are plenty of big images, but not so many small images. So if you come up with ideas of small images that could suit into this plate, please tell me.

The image of the gears was quite popular, here are the poll results.

Charming Nail's stunningly beautiful manicure Golden Zebra reminded me of couple of the manicures that I did last summer that I thought I could show you. I found this really old L'Oreal Holographic Shine (803) that was perfect for creating subtle effects. So I used it on top of almost everything.

Here it appears over Essie Noveau Red + Matte About You.

And here I used it on top of Essie Splash of Grenadine. I have seen people getting similar effects by using matte top coat and then stamping with regular top coat. I think I will try that also someday.

Whopping 59% of you would not stamp lab bottles on your nails

This definitely was the most unpopular image this far. I must admit that I also vote "I would not stamp this". I tried different type of bottles, test tubes and lots of combinations, but I just could not make an image of lab bottles that I would have wanted to stamp.

As this image will not end up to the plate, I am publishing the image with the voting results.

Next up will be some gears. Not sure how they would fit into the science theme... I guess technical stuff does have something to do with science. What do you think?

Today I have something else to show you too. One of my favorite manicures. Most often I like my nails either flashing red (like my current manicure with Essie Limited Addiction) or in some subtle color and playing with shiny and matte parts or matching colors.

This manicure had a coat of OPI Princesses Rule and then I went on konading with m57 and Depend 198. Many Depend polishes are excellent for stamping. I added french tips with m19. At that point I thought the manicure was ruined, but adding one coat of Princesses Rule changed it all and made it just perfect.

Voting results

Here are some results from the previous polls:

I wish Blogger would show them in more readable way!

We have quite a many images ready now that would fit the science plate. Most of them you have not seen yet and they were not among the original wishes for the plate. It may be that we have to put up more images per poll to show them to you on schedule.

By the way, we are a little late on the schedule. The prototypes and samples of the plates have not arrived on time. Good thing is that we still have plenty of time and this gives us more time to tweak the images for the plates.

The difference between Konad and fauxnad plates

Today I am going to give you some insights to the differences between Konad and fauxnad stamping plates.

There is a good posting in the Salon Geek about how to spot fake Konad products, which describes the basic differences. The Salon Geek posting shows an example of a bad quality stamping plate. But the plate in the image is not a laser etched plate at all. It is clearly visible that the plate is mechanically engraved, like the engravings in jewelry etc. Some crooks do sell plates like that, but they are not suitable for nail art stamping and I would not call those nail art stamping plates at all.

Good thing is that most of the fauxnads are not like that. Most of the fauxnads are genuinely laser etched and it is very hard to see the difference to the originals. From the top side, that is - none of the fauxnads have the nice decorated backside that Konad plates have.

Megan's secret to super-neat manicure

Do you read Polish or Perish? If not, then you have missed Megan's tutorial on How To Get That Picture Perfect Manicure. In her tutorial she explains step by step how you can clean up the gaps of your manicure with a brush and acetone.

It works like a charm and it is fast and easy. But before her tutorial it had never occurred to me that with proper tools one could reshape the edge of the polish afterwards!

Here are the tools that I used.

The brush was originally for eyeshadow, but it is perfect for this purpose. It holds enough nail polish remover and the bristles are tough enough to move the polish. Read Megan's tutorial for the detailed instructions how to use it to clean up the manicure.

Some voting results and discussion about the plate contents

As you have noticed we are currently sporting little opinion polls about the images. These polls do not carry giveaways as previous, bigger polls, but I hope that you still stop by and vote for your favorites. Next we'll have something different on the poll - images from the other plates. The current poll image (Ring of Leaves) is from the Lace plate and designed by iso-K.

The plan is that we will draw more images than will fit to the plate and when they all have been shown to you, we will (the art team together with designer plate artists) select the final images for the plate. We will take into account the votes that you have given.

You may be wondering why the poll results themselves are not enough for decision. There are several reasons, but the most important of them is that the poll results are not very reliable and it is easy to manipulate them. And look at what happened to The Daily Nail with her nail art competition.

The results from the two previous warning sign polls are following:

It seems that explosive sign was more popular than the biohazard sign. If you are wondering, explosive is an European warning sign and I am not sure whether is it used in other parts of the world.

We are still drawing/processing the images for the Science plate, so if you have any new image ideas that would be nice on that plate, please let us know!

Art on metal – laser etched nail art plates

In the last post we went through the history. Today I will tell you how the actual nail art plates are created.

The method used to manufacture nail art stamping plates is called laser etching or sometimes laser engraving. Whereas traditional artists used acid and sharp tools, the laser etching machines use laser to create the images on the plates. I will not go into the details as Wikipedia has an excellent explanation about the process of laser etching for those of you who are really, really interested. Instead, I am about to talk about the details that affect the plate quality from nail art stamping point of view.

From that point of view, there are some big issues concerning the plates:

• Material
• Etching quality
• Image format

High quality stamping plates are made from stainless steel. As I told you in the previous post, copper is regarded as the best metal for transferring images. But as stainless steel is much harder metal, it is preferred for the nail art stamping plates. That way the plates will last for a lifetime, even if you will use the metal scraper.

Laser etching was originally invented for making markings in rubber and many of the machines do not do metal at all or the quality is not good. Other problems may arise from the laser line-width. Not all laser etching machines are good for high detail art work, remember that they were originally meant for marking machine parts.

As you may have noticed in our status messages, we are often not talking about drawing the images, but processing the images. That is because the laser etching machines do not accept normal bitmap images, they require vector graphics. Of course they can work with regular images too, but the picture below shows the difference in quality between different formats.

While the regular laser etching machines are capable of creating nail art stamping plates, the cost is humonguous compared to the regular Konad plates. There are also "nail art stamping plate machines" – specific laser etching machines created for that task. The bad thing is that those machines do not do single plates. When they are started, they spit out hundreds of plates. That is why we chose to create a new collection of plates instead of just printing one set of plates for ourselves.

Art on metal – the history of metal plates for creating art

Many of you have probably wondered how the stamping plates are made. Some of you might even be interested in creating plates yourself. This post will give you some information about the history and methods for creating metal graphic art – including the nail art plates.

Intaglio is a family of printmaking techniques that use a metal plate for transferring the art to the final surface. The techniques include methods like etching, engraving, drypoint, aquatint and mezzotint.

The art of using metal plates to transfer images was invented in Germany in the 15th century. Same method has been used from ancient times in several continents, but using wood or other material as base. The new method of using metal plates became popular in Europe, making it possible for artists to reproduce their work. Some old masters, for example Rembrandt and Goya both originally gained their international reputation through their prints. Now their prints are rarely exhibited in museums for conservation reasons and we only get to see the paintings.

The self portrait of Rembrandt below was created using a metal plate as a base – similar than we are using when we stamp our nail.

Originally the plates were made out of copper and zinc. They are both soft metals and easy to work with, plus they say that the copper produces the best images.

The color was spread on the plate and excess was removed. Then the paper was placed over the plate and pressed hard on the metal. That way the paper filled the engravings of the metal plate and picked up the color. Due to the pressure together with soft metal, the plates are ruined during the process. Usually 30-100 impressions (=prints) are printed.

But as you know, we are not placing our nails on the plates and using pressure. Using rubber as a transfer media from the metal to the final target is called offset printing. It was invented in England in late 19th century.

And finally, it was Konad, who in year 2002 invented their little rubber stamper that enables us to reuse those age-old techniques to decorate our nails.

If you are interested in creating the stamping plates manually by yourself, there are metal graphic hobby clubs that are teaching the intaglio methods. In the area where I am living, the cost of such course is 39€ and a 10x10 cm copper plate of thickness 0,8mm costs less than 5€. Including all the material costs I would assume one would have her own stamping plates for a total cost of less than 70€.
I have not tried creating stamping plates myself so I do not know how much practise it needs to create plates that would be suitable for nail stamping purposes. Many of the old methods produce too deep carvings for this purpose. Also, most of the tools may produce lines that are too thick. But if I wanted to create plates myself, this would be what I would try.

In the next posting I will tell how the plates are manufactured with modern machinery.