Saturday, August 15, 2015

GPStamping Stamper Review (Black/Green/Opaque and Neon Colorways)

Hey stamp champs,

Welcome to another epic Lacquer Lockdown review!  Its obvi not been so usual of late but ya know striving for normalcy and all that jazz ;)  I hope everyone is having a great weekend so far!  I'm withering away in the full on oppressive heat that represents the Southeron front and dreaming of Starbucks but that is altogether another story lol.  In any case today I have another stamper review for you all.  I haven't done one of these in a while at least not since I reviewed the AE Jelly Soft Stampers, but I today I'm going to be focusing on a new to me and maybe new to you company called  GP Stamping.  At one point this company had a few individuals in an uproar.  More on that later, but for now I will preface this review by saying I will not tolerate disrespectful comments of any kind on this blog.  I post reviews of ALL products that I feel may benefit my followers or that I have purchased and feel warrant such a review.  If you don't like it move along, but no negativity in this space or any of my official spaces.  Now as usual this review will be broken into sections that you can scan through.  Please don't forget to leave any questions or feedback you have for me and now let's get this show on the road ;)

GPStamping

This Columbian based company is run by Guillermo Gauncha and is very new - think a couple months on the market.  Guillermo noticed some of his lady friends raving over silicone stampers and the demand for larger diameter stampers and realized he could make these himself as well and promptly did much to the delight of his fan base.   His focus has been on meeting the demands of avid stampers, such as myself, with regard to increasing the color ways of stampers available, storage options, softness and shape of the stamper itself.

Directly after he began manufacturing and selling his stampers some drama, which as I have stated will not be tolerated here, erupted over his acquisition of the Creative Shop "style" in the use of his own product.  To that I will say we live in the era of a free market.   Styles of stampers are not patented and there are many different kinds out there.  In fact if you are interested I can to a whole YT video on all the various type of stampers I own and what I use them for as I have more than a few so let me know.  The holders themselves are nothing more than stainless steel shot glasses and the heads are silicone i.e. neither of these concepts are original.  If there is one company with the potential to claim originality to ALL stampers that came after it would be Konad, but guess what? They took  their idea from another company too.  So no this is not the CS stamper and no GPStamping is not infringing upon any kind of copyright out there because there is none that I know of and I take that type of thing pretty seriously.  As a stamping enthusiast I welcome all comers to the free market especially where they offer competitive pricing and improved products and I will leave it firmly at that.

Materials & Composition

These stampers are composed of silicone, as mentioned above, much like most stampers available on the market.  The layout of which is most similar to the CS stamper.  However I will add that these pads are even softer and more malleable than the CS stamper in addition to other myriad differences. The neon colorway of these stampers are even softer than the original black/green/opaque colorways.



They are not marshmallow stampers in the traditional sense but rather the Marshmallow 2.0 type that I came up with when reviewing the AE Jelly Soft stampers.  However that label is only for the neon colored stampers and they are only mildly marshmallowy.  The consistency of each pad is more on par with gelatin than traditional silicone.  Of note while the neon pads are soft and slightly sticky they in no way as sticky or marshmallowy as the old Winstonia Store or Fab Ur Nails stampers or even the current Soft Set from Messy Mansion.  If you still don't know what a marshmallow stamper is read here.

Measurements & Specifications

Size in Diameter: 



Head Shape:  Domed (as opposed to flat like the CS stamper)

Colorways:  Opaque or Off White / Lime Green / Black / Neon Pink / Neon Yellow / Neon Red

Holder:  4 cm - 1 oz steel shot glass

Price: $6-7 USD/per set

Video Demo

So basically I wanted to up my videography and it's a work in progress, but I really tried changing up my intro to make it more fun.   So from now on prepare for some slick ass moves on the camera floor.  Lolol ok well as slick as I can make them.  I'm not SimplyNailogical up in here though she is my camera HERO.  Anyway here I just show off the softy squishy factor of these heads and do some comparisons.  I tried to be all fancy and stuffs - let me know if it worked or if you just sat there laughing.



Swatches

I love a good still!  I'll be honest here and say I hate video swatching.  I kinda even think its bullshit if you pardon my french.  I mean goodness why on Gods green would people want to sit and watch me apply polish to a plate, scrape it off, press it into the stamper and then focus the camera on the swatch or head and finally wash rinse repeat 50 gagillion times?  I imagine at those times my followers are silently pointing a gun directly at the camera, but the gun is aimed at my head and I don't know to duck.  Eep! You can see how that might make me a bit nervous.  So still swatches babes. You can come back and look at any time you want to over and over again without clicking on a particular segment of a video to view.  Don't you love me?  PS I give you the goods unprimed and primed because I love you ;)


The swatches for these were done using a Messy Mansion plate and Mundo de Unas stamping polish. The quality of Messy Mansion plates is top notch in terms of etching and design, and MdU is the most reliable stamping polish I own and a gold standard in terms of opacity.  As you can see despite the high quality of the plate and polish these stampers would not pick up without priming.


Better right? But I was super disappointed by the pick up on the orange stamper.  It really wouldn't pick up despite attempting to re-prime it.  The rest picked up very well for the most part but as you can see all of them had tiny missing spots in the bottom portion of the design.  That's where the whole issue of air bubbles and these oversized XXL stampers comes into play.  As an fyi getting these swatches did require rolling for best pickup which is something that has to be done with all stampers of this type except another set that I will be reviewing for you later ;)


I also chose to do a swatch using a marshmallow stamper, the one below is the only one from the AliExpress set I reviewed a while ago, because I want you to see the difference in pickup when you use a stamper that literally picks up every single part of a pattern.  Also because the stamper below is a true marshmallow it did not require rolling to get that perfect pickup.  I pressed straight down and the full image transferred perfectly without air bubbles. Looking at the primed swatches the neon pink pad has the best pick up of these pads, but they all have air bubble areas that are missing portions of the full image.

Marshmallow Stamper Swatch


Plate used for swatching is from Messy Mansion


Final Impression

Alright here comes the part where I bottom line it for you all.  GPStamping is offering stampers that offer the novelty of a large stamper and beautiful and bright colors that functions at a higher level than its predecessor.  The original colorways, green, black, and opaque, are a bit more firm than I care for while the neon colorways are softer and much more malleable.  These stampers are priced competitively compared to other options on the market (for now), but the down side is they are still struggling from the growing pains that plagued the CS stamper.  Namely bald patches and the need to roll to ameliorate the flawed pickup that the heads produce.  This flaw is much smaller than anything I've seen previously however it's still there.

I think the average stamper will like these stampers a lot, particularly the neon colorways, without getting too hung up on the minor bald patches.  Especially given how well received the CS stamper was even with these flaws which in my opinion were much more pronounced.  I think for me the quest will still continue for the perfect marshmallow large stamper that has excellent reproducible pickup without bald patches that ruin my macros.  However I do like these stamping pads especially the neon ones.  So I can see using them again especially for decaling and open patterns.  If you're interested in purchasing these visit GPStamping on Facebook and PM Guillermo.  He has also released 4 plates and a host of holders and storage options for the stampers.

That said I hope everyone enjoyed the review.  If you own these stampers I'd love to hear about your experience with them or if you have any questions or comments please feel free to ask them below.  I really love reading and chatting with everyone!  Thanks for reading and I'll see you next post....


These stampers were purchased by me for my own personal use and review.  For more information please see Disclosures Policy.

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