free sheet music (+ some free konad tips)

i decided china glaze classic camel was the perfect color with which to test out my new konad plate. i've been wanting this plate (m73) for forever, and finally purchased it off amazon. i wanted this mani to look like really old, worn sheet music. unfortunately, i picked a pretty hard pattern (at least for beginners such as myself) that definitely has a learning curve. . . .

please do not enlarge. . . . eeps

it doesn't look too terrible. . . . at least from a distance. i had the hardest time with this image, though. i felt like i went through a whole bottle of wet 'n wild black creme trying to do this mani (ok, not really. maybe just half a bottle. but still, that's way too much polish). so, in the interest of aiding others who are as clueless as myself, i thought i would compile a list of things i learned about konading from my mistakes:

1) do not use polish remover with any kind of added moisturizer.... it just won't work.

i kept scraping and stamping and nothing would transfer!! i got so frustrated. . . . after a quick google search, i realized that i had made a grave error in buying polish remover with gelatin in it. oops. i didn't have anything else on hand except pure acetone, so i used that instead. it worked much better.

2) do not use a legit scraper. it does exactly what its name implies, just a little too well.

i used an old health insurance card instead. any kind of plastic card will work just fine, and it won't scratch up your lovely plate.

3) hold your "scraper" at 45 degrees and scrape lightly.

otherwise you will scrape away too much polish and it won't pick up clearly. especially with a very thin and detailed image like m73.

4) scrape, pick up image, and stamp as quickly as possible!

after reading some tips online, i realized that i wasn't moving quickly enough. so some of the image would dry on the stamper before it could transfer to my nail. apparently you need to be lightning fast to successfully konad. . . . geez, this is so complicated and intense!

5) it is possible to scratch off an unsuccessful stamp from your fingernail. 

which is really good news for me. on a couple of fingers, my stamping attempt looked so horrendous that i just scratched it off with the tip of a metal nail file, and tried again. i'm glad you can do this without having to repaint your base color. how awful would that be??

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all in all, it didn't turn out atrocious, but i have a lot of practicing to do. at least my little music students thought it was pretty cool.