Konad

Nail stamping transfers an engraved design from a metal plate onto the nail using a pigment thick enough to sit inside the engraving. KONAD popularised the technique for home use, which is why the catalog is organised around it. The KONAD Image Plate carries the etched patterns, and the KONAD Special Polish supplies the dense colour the plate picks up. The coats, cleansers and removers on the rest of this page exist to support that core action. If you have only ever used a brush-on lacquer, the shift is that the plate and the special pigment are the two parts you cannot skip.

The KONAD Image Plate is an engraved metal disc holding the artwork, from fine lace and florals to geometric and seasonal motifs. You ink the engraved area, scrape the excess flat with a card edge, then lift the design onto a soft stamper and roll it onto the nail. Plates are reusable for years if you wipe them after each press, so they are the part of the kit worth choosing carefully by the designs you actually want to wear. Build a small library over time rather than buying everything at once; a couple of versatile plates cover far more looks than a single themed one.

This is the distinction that trips up most first-time buyers. KONAD Special Polish is formulated thick and heavily pigmented so it fills a plate engraving and transfers cleanly; it is the stamping colour. KONAD Regular Polish 10ml is an ordinary brush-on lacquer for painting the base colour across the whole nail. A thin regular polish will not stamp because it slides out of the engraving before the scrape, and a thick special polish is fiddly to use as an all-over base. Plan to own both: a regular shade for the background and a contrasting special shade for the stamped pattern on top.

The KONAD Base Coat 10ml goes down first to give colour something to grip and to keep pigment off the bare nail. After the design is stamped and dry, the KONAD Top Coat 10ml seals it so the pattern doesn't smudge or wear off at the edges within a day. The KONAD Top Gel 10g is the higher-shine, longer-wearing finish if you want the manicure to read glossier and last closer to a salon set. For everyday wear the regular top coat is enough; reach for the top gel when you want the design to survive a full week of hand-washing.

Stamping is a messy craft, and KONAD sells the cleanup tools alongside the colour. The KONAD Gel Cleanser, stocked in a 100ml size as well, wipes the tacky residue off a cured gel layer so the next coat or the top gel adheres properly. The KONAD Nail Remover takes polish off at the end of a manicure or corrects a stamped design that landed crooked before it sets. Keep both within reach during a session rather than treating them as afterthoughts; clean plates and a clean nail surface are most of what separates a sharp stamp from a blurry one.

A complete first stamping kit from this catalog is more than just a plate and a colour. The minimum that actually works start to finish is: one Image Plate, one Special Polish for the stamp, one Regular Polish for the base, a Base Coat, and a Top Coat to seal. Add the Gel Cleanser and a Nail Remover so you can correct mistakes and clean plates between presses. With sixty-plus items in stock you can layer on extra plates and shades later, but that core seven-piece set is what lets you finish a design on day one instead of discovering mid-manicure that a step is missing.

Not everything KONAD makes is for stamping. The KONAD 100g foot cream is a straightforward body-care addition for dry, rough heels, the kind of practical Korean skincare staple that rounds out a brand best known for nail art. It sits outside the stamping system entirely, so treat it as a standalone buy rather than part of a manicure kit. If you are already ordering plates and polishes, it is a low-cost item to fold into the same shipment.

KONAD is a Korean brand and these products ship from Korea, so the bottles follow Korean sizing conventions: the polishes, top coat and base coat come in compact 10ml bottles, the top gel in 10g, and the cleanser in a 100ml size. The small bottles are normal for nail lacquer and last a long time because each manicure uses very little. Buying the genuine KONAD plates matters too, since the engraving depth on authentic plates is what makes a clean transfer possible in the first place; thinner imitation plates are the usual reason a stamp comes out faint.