Hello again, Dear Reader!
As often happens early in the morning, I got bored today. What do I do in the early hours and I get bored? I play with the Konad!
I didn't want to change my Spectacular Mystery Holo polish, and was thinking of what I could stamp on it that would be both consistent with the polish and continue to make me think happy thoughts of L8B (the sender of the polish). Fortunately for me, the perfect starting point arrived yesterday from Hong Kong - a Fauxnad plate (not the real name, just a little play on words I made up for Konad knock-offs) with Hello Kitty on it! L8B directed me to the plates, so it reminds me of her, and the pattern itself is consistent with the Asian feel of the polish (delicately super sparkly polishes seem Asian to me, as they get more of those there than we do). I decided Hello Kitty would go on my nail bed, and another of the plates from Hong Kong has a great flower pattern for my tips, and it's reversible to boot! That is, the plate has two images of the flower pattern that are mirror images of one another, so I can finally have my hands be mirror images of each other (which is big for a symmetry freak like me). I'll show you what I mean...
The pattern furthest to the right is the one I used, but as you can see, there are a few reversible patterns on this plate. While I was taking pictures of things that aren't nails, I thought I'd take a picture of my Konading setup and how I wipe the plate between stamps for Kajsa, who asked about it the last time I did a Konadicure. I didn't think of it until I was done stamping, but the pictures show everything reasonably well.
I hold the cotton on the index through ring fingers of my right hand, keeping it only as high as the top joint of my index finger, and holding it in place with the inner side of the joint in the middle of my thumb. That keeps the acetone off of the manicure, and I just use my hand flat to wipe the plate. When actually wiping the plate, I use my right index finger and thumb to hold the plate still by the edges, but here I'm using my right hand to take the picture. Using the hand flat may be foreign to some of you, but one adjusts - I use my hands that way more often than not to avoid breaking nails. Here are some pictures so you don't have to visualize, and I'll explain the Konad setup in a second.
Here's the placement of the cotton pad on the underside of the hand:
Here's how I use it to wipe the plate, with the position of the thumb really exaggerated so it shows up:
One warning before you look at the next picture - I'm not good about putting polishes I've used away until there's no more room on the coffee table. Never have been, probably never will be, and I'm okay with that... Right now, my coffee table looks like a Lite Brite. In any case, I sit on my loveseat to do my nails, and just lean over to the edge of the coffee table to do the Konading. The only thing that's missing here is an acetone-soaked piece of cotton or felt in the lid of the checkbook box with all the other supplies in the picture of my little setup. I use that, the one piece of cotton or felt, for Konading one stamp over both hands, cleaning the plate between stamps. I keep a dry piece of cotton in the box to wipe off the scraper as needed. Here's my setup right after I've stamped...
When I'm done, the plates go back into the bottom half of the checkbook cover box with all my other plates, the Post-It pad that I use to hold the plate I'm using gets put into the top with the other supplies, and it all gets put away. And the coffee table continues to look like a Lite Brite!
Now that you've seen one of the plates, how I use the cotton so as not to mess up my manicure (or, if I'm smart I use felt, which leaves no lint), and my little stamping setup, I'll show you the Konadicure I did! I took pictures of both hands to show the mirror image of the flower pattern, where I have the flowers going from largest to smallest from the opposite side so my hands match, but alas, the difference in the size of the flowers is not especially noticable... All the same, I love the mani, so I'll show you both hands anyhow.
So that's today's Konadicure, how I decided upon and executed it, and my little setup for doing so. If you need more Konad help, I posted instructions a while back - here's a link. Please note the edit at the top - if I had it to do over, I'd use pure acetone for wiping the plate, which eliminates the step of drying the plate, and I'd use felt rather than cotton (no lint).
That's all for today, Dear Reader. Please be sure to enter to win a bottle of BTO at the end of the post below, and until tomorrow, love and nail polish to you!
