Above, you can see that the plate is mailed to you well-protected. There is a plastic backing to help prevent the metal from bending during transport, and a blue film covering on the surface to safeguard the plate from scratches. It is important to remove this film! If you don't remove it before using your stamping plate, it won't work for you. Sometimes, these film coverings are clear. Make sure to scratch at a corner of your plate to see if something will begin peeling up.
In this sassy cheetah design, I used a base of "Rohan" from Regal Ween Lacquer and dark purple polish for stamping "Miami at Night" by Color Mates as well as metallic studs from Born Pretty Store (item #7277, $6.99). I really enjoy the way this one turned out.
I made a few other designs using this plate as well. I really had fun with it! Below, you can see two manis I made using Fairytale Finish polish. In the first mani, I simply used black polish to stamp the circuit board design over mint green polish, with a sparkly gray accent nail. In the second mani, I applied a glitterbomb over a gradient, then used the reverse stamping technique for my accent nail. I used purple polish with the stamping plate, picked up the image on my stamper, then colored between the lines with pink and blue polish. I waited for it to dry on the stamper then painted a top coat over the whole thing. After that dried, I peeled the polish off of the stamper and applied it to a wet layer of polish on my nail. I may post a sort of tutorial for this technique later but there are plenty of videos you can find online that describe it in detail.
Overall, I think this stamping plate is a pretty good deal. There is a good variety of images and they work well (of course, matching the right polish and the right stamper to the right plate is always important). One thing I really enjoyed about this plate is that the full-nail images are actually large enough to cover longer nails. I typically have a problem with full-nail images not being long enough to completely cover my nails. The images on this plate would be able to cover my nails even if I grew them out a bit longer! So that's great news for medium or long nail ladies/gents. I noticed that there is another plate they offer with XL sized designs and I can't imagine needing ones that long! My point is, if you think your nails are too long for effective stamping, this may be a good option for you.
See you next time! Feel free to leave a comment if there's something you'd like to see in future blog posts. :) Remember to use discount code FEPX31 if you shop Born Pretty to get 10% off on top of free worldwide shipping!
