Barbie Digital Nail Printer Software
Posted on December 17, 2010 By Need a holiday gift idea for your little ones? How about a Barbie doll’d up nail machine? Growing up not being crazy about Barbie dolls, I admit Barbie was never out of the spotlight of fashion and trend.
Digital Nail Art Printer
Especially recently I’ve spotted a lot of Barbie hair dryers, straighteners, nail care sets including this one, digital nail printer. When I first saw it, I was like, hmm girls nowadays are so lucky, they have so many high-tech beauty toys to play with.
1000+ nail designs! That’s amazing. Look at those girls’ happy face on the box. I’d be happy too if I were them. Some designs are really pretty. All you need is a PC computer. It’s not compatible with MAC.
It even takes custom pictures of your own. How about your little puppy on your nails? Now let’s take a look at the printer. The main body is hot pink with transparent lid that covers the printer mechanisms. On the back, there’s two slots for your power cord and USB cable. The machine itself is rather simple, just a basic ink cartridge printer.
This is what looks inside. The pink plastic covers printer cartridge. The little Barbie part is the printer head that sprays ink on your nails. The half moon shaped black wall is where your nail go.
This is what it looks like from front. It comes with a USB cable and AC power cord. A calibration card that you use to line the camera and the printer.
Yes there’s a camera inside, so the machine knows where your nail is and the shape of it. Three Barbie doll’d up nails polishes, white, base and top coat. They were all sealed like the top coat. I only opened white and base coat to test out the printer. I’m not sure if they’re the same as your regular white and top coat polish, but I can tell the base coat is not your typical base coat.
We’ll see it in just a little bit. Material for reading and driver CD. More material for reading. I hate reading but without knowing how to install and align the printer, I can’t play with it.
It also teaches you the fun part, Design & Print. And how to import your own images. In case you run out of ink or polishes, there’s a place to order. The other book pretty much has similar info, but printed in color. So far so good. It seems quite easy to follow. Finally I got my printer hooked up to the computer.
Yay the menu comes up! Now let’s give it a try! Apparently the patterns show up better on a white base, so I put on the white coat and base as instructed.
Boy the white polish sucks. It was thick and the brush was hard to work with. The first try came out a disaster. Four out of five designs were out of place.
Not to say it took me at least 30 minutes and all that sweat to install and align the printer. I’m not giving up yet. Luckily I don’t need to start all over. I just wash the base coat off with warm water, towel dry, reapply base coat and I’m good to go again. It seems like the base coat is more like a glue-ish gel. It’s supposed to make the ink stay better but it rinses off in water.
That’s why you need a top coat to protect the print, or else it’s not water proof. After another 10 minutes aligning the camera and printer, lots of finger wiggling and waggling, I got my second try straight, well sort of. On my thumb, three strawberry smileys. They’re a little smudged.
On index, Barbie’s smooch and her signature with purple/black on smile line. I messed up the first time on the smile line so now you see a crooked second smile line. On middle finger, I did a plaid design. It was still not perfectly positioned. On the ring finger, I did a flower design. It was almost good if it printed a little higher. Colorful stripe design.
Again it was printed too low. My thoughts about the Barbie doll’d up nails digital nail printer: What I like: 1. The design is adorable and it’s in a hot pink color. I don’t know any girl who doesn’t like pink yet. It’s definitely fun for girls especially when they have a birthday party.
There’re a tons of designs and patterns to choose from its library. You can even make your own. Imagine we can all print our significant one on our nails just like Katy Perry. It’s super fast. It takes literarily a second to actually print the nail once you got the preparations done right.
What could be better: 1. The image quality is rather low. Though from far away it looks pretty good. No MAC support. Being a MAC computer fan, this is really sad. The aligning process is very tricky. I still could’t get it aligned after almost an hour of frustration.
The price is not cheap. I got it at for $149.99 when they had the promotion. Regular price is $179.99 as of I’m writing this post.
Conclusion: For a $150 girl toy, it’s too expensive. For the grown-ups, the quality isn’t as good as I wanted. Though it’s fun and it’ll sure to make a 8 year-old smile, I don’t think it’s worth the money. I rather get her a doll house or a bike and helmet. Hopefully the next generation nail printer has better quality.