My mother has ruined me.

I had successfully avoided jumping on the gel manicure bandwagon… up until recently.

My mother has been getting gel/shellac manicures for probably about a year now, and swears up and down about how nice they are and how they keep her nails long and beautiful. You see, we both have thin, brittle nails, and we’re not the nicest to them, so manicures (whether they were salon or home done) never lasted very long. Of course that didn’t stop us from going to get them. In my case, the only reason I looked forward to a trip to the nail salon was the girl time and getting my nails shaped/cuticles trimmed. I hardly kept my polish on more than a few days.

My mother goes in about every three weeks to get her nails redone, and sometimes she takes my sister and/or I along with her. Often it’s because we’re going on vacation, and getting mani/pedi’s beforehand has become somewhat of a tradition. Sometimes it’s just because. Now that I’m at college, living away from home, it’s often my sister that goes. But I have gone a few times in the past year, but like I said, I have never gotten gel polish because I told myself I didn’t want to go through the trouble of taking it off myself since I wouldn’t be home again next time they went in.

It’s not that I didn’t believe my mom or sister. It’s not that I didn’t want to try gel nail polish. I very much did since it seemed that no matter what I tried, I could not keep my polish looking good after going to work. And it’s a pain sometimes to have to be constantly redoing my nails so that I don’t break one while on the clock. What had me stopping was the fact that I have a huge nail polish collection that I’ve probably sunk more money than I should have into over the years. That, and the saddening fact that gel manicures are not the cheapest, and as a fairly broke college student, the last thing I wanted was to be hooked.

However, recently, I was broken down and convinced to get a gel manicure.

Nail stamping…

…is something you really need to add to your bag of tricks if you want to ever accomplish awesome home manicures. And though the technique can seem a little daunting, for it does take some practice and a steady hand to master, I didn’t think twice about ordering image plates. I had seen way too many beautiful manicures done to not jump aboard that train.

So of course when I got my image plates in the mail, all I wanted to do was try them out. [The plate used here is from the Cheeky Vibrant Collection, which included 26 nail art image plates and I bought for $15.99 on Amazon.] First, I picked out my colors and then practiced a bit.

Plate number 11 in the series

Stamping didn’t seem too hard.