DIY Nail Stamping Plates with the Othermill

My sister Emma has a Monster High themed Youtube channel where she does unboxing and tutorial videos. It’s a pretty awesome continuation of the sorts of storytelling games we used to play together as kids. She has always brought life to characters in this incredible way. Nowadays she is both working on her own characters and story worlds as a Visual Development student, and bringing great appreciation and joy to the detailed worlds of existing toys.

This week we collaborated to make a video that combines Monster High and digital fab! When I told her about the Othermill (a CNC milling machine that my partner works on the software for), she asked if it would be possible to make nail stamping plates. I didn’t know what those were, so she showed me: little metal plates with embossed decorative designs which can be filled with nail polish and transferred to your nails with a silicone stamp. We are pretty sure that the commercial sets are chemically etched based on the smoothness of the grooves, but after some experimentation we figured out that engraving works just fine!

Here’s the video:

I’m awkward on camera 😛 I’ll get better at that eventually. In the meantime, isn’t this SERIOUSLY COOL?! I have a spirograph set planned: gears for the thumbs and a different hypotrochoid for each finger.

One comment

  1. Clara says:

    This is super amazing. I’m so impressed. Especially at the precision of the machine and creativity that both of you share. If massage therapists could paint their fingernails I’d totally use this.

Leave a Reply to Clara Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *