Reversed stamping - The Cut Up.

Reversed stamping is a bitch.
For me at least it is. Making the decal is easy, placing it making it look good, not fun at all.
There are a few different ways of doing it, and you can google that yourself. I'm not Wikipedia.

Anyways.
Today I wanted to try something different.
But before I get into that, let me explain reversed stamping to any n00bs out there:

You need:
* A plastic cover to paint the polish on
* Polish (doh)
* Stamping equipment - I recommend plates with bold patterns.
* Top coat.
* Tweezer.
* Scissors.
* Patience.

You start by drawing a square on the plastic cover, this makes it more easy to see where to stamp and peel afterwards. Then paint in a coat of clear top coat in the square and let dry.
Stamp over the clear top coat and let dry. Now you can add colors where you want using a brush or a dotting tool. You let that dry and add another coat of clear top coat over the design (optional)
Let dry. Once dry, yet not totally dry let it still be kinda soft to the touch, peel it off with tweezers. Start in the corners and work your way in. Cut the now hand made decal to fit your nail, add a little clear top coat on the nail to help the decal stick. Pat gently with an orange stick or similar. Add a coat of top coat, let dry and you are done.

Ignore the white robots, my plastic sheet happen to have robots on it. Stamping done!

Add color where you want it.

Peel off!

What I did is a little different. I followed the normal steps up until the stamping. Once the stamping was dry, I painted the whole square with solid colored nail polish. Once dry, I peeled it off and flipped it. That way the pattern is visible from the front, and the back is a bright color. I then cut it up into different shapes, and placed it on the nail as a collage. I totally digg the result and its so much more easy to do.

Cut it up! Any shape you want! No rules!

Mixing colors and patterns.

Here I added a coat of glitter.

And then a coat of creme polish over it all.

Pretty sweet looking, huh?

Just imagine all the different ways you can do this, use a hole puncher for circles, pain the square in glitter, combine colors and patterns....just go with the flow!

And for those of you who care....the reason why I named this mani Cut Up is all because of William S. Burroughs. 
And the lovely GenesisP-Orridge of course.

"Cut word lines — Cut music lines — Smash the control images — Smash the control machine — Burn the books — Kill the priests — Kill! Kill! Kill!"