The store has permanently closed.

This is a long story, without a very clear answer (tl;dr at the end). For one thing, this was a hobby project that I started for fun, and because I wanted nerdy stamping plates for myself. Just to try it out, I started the Etsy store while I used a publicly available machine to make the plates. To my surprise, the plates became quite popular, and I put quite a bit of time into making new plates and cutting plates to order. However, the machine I used broke, and when I finally received my own machine there was a lot of work redesigning the plates to work with the new machine that cut differently. I also opened a new store using Storenvy, as Etsy had changed the pricing and charged a lot of (in my opinion) unnecessary fees from the customers. At the same time, I was finishing my PhD, moved to a house, and just generally had less and less time to put into this hobby of mine. But I thought it was so much fun, so I kept doing it, even though work after the PhD was killing me. I didn't have time to make new plates, but I continued selling the ones that I had and people seemed to like them.

Then, about a year ago, my supplier of acrylic (and the only supplier in the area, as well as the only reasonably priced supplier) switched the material. It was perfectly fine at first, but then I started receiving support messages about cracking plates - which had never happened before. It turns out that the new material was sensitive to several common solvents used in nail polish removers - quite a big problem. For a while I sent out warnings to people, and it seemed to work OK, even though I disliked having limitations to the use of my products. In fact, I firmly believe that good quality stamping plates should be possible to use with all polishes and products that you want (and for the most part, this was the case for my plates).

But the last straw was about a month ago. Again, my supplier of acrylic had changed material, and I again started receiving support messages about my plates, this time about them not stamping well. I've always prided myself in selling plates that stamp great even for beginners, but it turns out that the new material is slightly harder than the old material, meaning that I had to find new settings for the machine again. I also noticed that my machine, which is now a few years old and quite well-used, has started cutting unevenly. This was it, for me. There were just too many problems and I simply didn't find it fun anymore. I want to put out a quality product, and trust that the materials and machines that I use are reliable and produce consistent products. I realised that it was time for me to close the store.

tl;dr Problems caused by constant material changes and evil nail polish remover solvents, just tipped me over the edge.

I don't plan on it, but I guess you should never say never.

While it would technically be possible to sell the plate designs to someone, they would need to buy their own (quite expensive and niche) equipment for making the plates. It also requires quite a bit of expertise in graphics design. It would also need to be someone with time and a passion for nail stamping and nerdy things. This limits the number of people who could take over. Furthermore, I have always been very concerned with maintaining good quality, and I wouldn't feel right selling to just anyone without knowing them quite well. As a result, I have concluded that I simply care too much to sell my designs to someone else. While I realise that this kind of sucks, as the store definitely has to close, I hope that the few years the store was open made some people happy :).

I no longer make plates. If you're lucky, you can buy used plates from someone.