The Nail it Good

I take my nail art seriously. I plan to take it further soon, so I wanted to start on my namecard. There's been some exciting progress in that sector, so I wanted to share them with you. But first, let me tell you how it began.

I met Fiq while we were queueing up for The Used's concert. She's amazing. She's got a talent for typography and illustration, and I knew I had to own one of her works. You can view her work here. She takes projects, so I ordered an illustration from Fiq. My brief was, well, brief. I knew I wanted something circular, which included 2 of my favourite flowers, a camelia (whose oil works so well on my hair, by the way), and a rose. And off that, Fiq drew this:

You should have seen my face when I saw the final product. It's perfect. She was nothing short of supportive, and the end result was more than I had imagined.

So for the next step, I knew I wanted to make this illustration into a stamp, so I can use it on my namecard. Fiq referred me to another talented artist: Lini.

Now, Lini specializes in handcarved hard rubber stamps. To view her work, click through here. She gave me a lot of advice on selecting the size of the stamp to that would fit best on my namecards, and I really appreciate how patient she was with me. When everything was settled, she had the stamps done in a week, and mailed to me the next day. Here's the final result:

I had ordered a 4x4cm stamp of my logo, and a 10x10cm stamp of the floral illustration that Fiq drew (which was huge. It's a beast of a stamp!). Lini also provided a few test prints of the stamps for my reference, and some were stickers too!

Entirely hand carved. Would you just take a moment to soak it all in?

The box I received included her beautiful namecard, a few tests of my stamp (which included one stamped on a namecard so I could preview how it would look on the final product). It also comes with a handbook on what she does, and how to take care of the stamps (which I really appreciate, because I have no idea what I'm doing half the time).

Again, I couldn't be more happy to have met Fiq at that concert, because all this would not have happened. The next step is to get myself an inkpad, some good paper, and start producing my namecard for realsies. At first, I wanted to use a gold ink for the floral stamp, but me and my sis now have other plans. I'm going to take a trip down to PaperMarket this week to have a look at the available colours and then make a final decision. Hell, if I can't decide on one colour then I'm buying them all! If wallet permits, that is.

Having interacted with these 2 amazing people pushed me to want to work on my craft even more as well. I can't wait to do their work justice and use the stamps.

And I think that's the story up till now. Expect more updates when I get to the next step!