Moyou. Their US store is closing so everything’s on clearance right now. Great plates too, which is the part that stings a bit.
Kelli Marissa on YouTube. Her stamping tutorials are worth watching if you want to see the technique in action instead of just reading about it.
The polish matters more than the stamper, as long as you’re getting something on Amazon for a few bucks and not trying to make one yourself. Regular black works fine, but colors like silver and green really do better with an actual stamping formula. MoYou makes solid plates, and Kads has a ridiculous range if you want options.
Good plates is what you should really look for.
Cheap Amazon sets work fine most of the time. Maybe one or two designs out of ten stamp badly, but the rest pick up okay if your polish is decent- not glass-etched quality, but still usable.
Just my experience with a couple of sets.
Skip the ice cube stampers.
The What’s Up Nails Jumbo Clear Jelly has worked well for me, and the clear barrel really does help with alignment. If you’re thinking Maniology instead, their large round stampers are fine. The little ice cube ones bundled into the starter kits are the problem, though. They’re too stiff, so you don’t get a clean pickup off the plate.
It’s kind of annoying, since those are the ones most people start with.
Two years with my Clear Jelly Stamper. Still going strong.
I get the hype now. Lantern and Wren’s Simply Silver was the indie pick in those Holy Grail surveys a while back, and mine worked straight out of the package, no dish soap or overnight paper trick to strip the oil needed. Just picked it up and stamped.
Which never happens, in my experience.
Half the time it’s the plate that’s the problem, especially the cheaper ones with shallow etching. Nothing will pull a clean image off those, no matter how good your polish is or how squishy your head is.
Check the film too, including the blue protective layer and those tiny slivers that hide at the edges. I’ve missed those more than once. Wash new plates with dish soap before you write anything off, and dry them properly. Then judge the stamper.