September Nail Art Challenge: Stamping Month! Day 3: Cat/Dog/Pet

Introduction:

Today I have black & white stamping to share with you and it features cats. When I was a kid our first pet was classy black & white cat with pretty wild character, but we all loved him. Unfortunately, after several month it turned out that I have serious allergy to cats and my parents had to remove cat from our home. We were told that cat was brought back to our summer cottage and left there to have free life. It was the most serious lie my parents told me and I totally believed it until several years later accidentally discovered sad truth (the cat was euthanized). Given reality of our country back then, it was a right thing to do, but it did not make it easy for my parents. So this mani is dedicated to all the bright memories about my first and only cat Tishka.

Results:

 Figure 1. All five nails stamped with various cat related patterns including super cool fish skeletons and free hand writing "meow".

 Figure 2&3. More shots done with different camera modes. You can see that black cat has pretty grumpy look. Also try to note that both black & white backgrounds are not simple.

Figure 4. Macro picture clearly shows that white has some sparkles in it (Picture polish White wedding ). Also it shows that black polish I used for stamping (Essie Licorice) is not so good on very contrast white background, hence the cat has "stripes".

Figure 4. Macro picture showing sparkles of the black background (Emily de Molly Dark crystal), also it's obvious here that I was not able to center images well.

Figure 4. This marco looks fine, but to be honest i had to clean up hand written "meow" in photoshop because it got smeared after top coat application.

Figure 5. Same image without editing. "Meow" is just awful. 

Materials and Methods:

Nail polish: 

• Essie - Licorice (stamping and first layer of black nails)
• Emily de Molly - Dark crystal (two coats on top of Licorice for nice sparkly background)
• Julep - Nicolette (stamping and first layer of white nails)
• Picture polish - White wedding (two coats on top of Nicolette)

Stamping plates:

• Pueen 40
• BM 004

Discussion:

I use Licorice for all my stamping which requires black color, however it turned out that this polish is not perfect for stamping of patterns with large colored area on very contrast background. Do you think that using special stamping polish (e.g. Konad) can help to solve this problem? Also it would be nice to know your preferences for  black&white stamping polishes.

References:

Picture polish - White wedding

Emily de Molly Dark crystal