Essence Stamp Review

About a month ago, I discovered that Essence now has a huge display at the Fred Meyer near my house, and they have a bunch of nail art stuff for super cheap.  I picked up a bunch of stuff to try out, and one of the things I've been dying to try is stamping.  I haven't really wanted to spend the money to get stuff from Ebay, so I thought this would be a good way to try it out.  I definitely paid under $5 for both of these items together.  

I bought the Essence stamping polish in black, and honestly, it sucked.  I only tried it once and it dried before I could get the stamp onto my nail.  I didn't try it again.  For this mani, I used a base of Revlon Perfectly Plum then used Sally Hansen Black Pearl Chrome for the stamps.  From what I've seen, chrome and metallic polishes usually work really well for stamping.

I like how it turned out!  I used a flower design with some dots and a swirl, then I filled just the flower and stamped that on for a little extra pretty.  It was easy to fill only a part of the pattern to make that little accent.  One bad thing about this stamping kit is the scraper.  It sucks.  It's metal and not completely flat, it doesn't wipe the polish off clean and drags on the metal plate, plus it was leaving some scratch marks.  Not good.  I got out an old credit card and used that and it worked like a dream.

The only other downside to these stamping plates is that the designs on the rectangular plate are not very big.  I think I could get most of my nails covered with maybe little gaps on the sides that wouldn't be that noticeable, but they're definitely not big enough to cover my entire thumb.  It seems like everything Essence makes is kind of miniature.

All in all, I'm super glad I bought these.  I love stamping just as much as I thought I would, and I can't wait to get some more plates when my budget allows it!