Lace nails with a touch of sparkle

Earlier this month I reviewed some BornPrettyStore plates, and I already showed manis with 2 of those plates (here's the 2nd mani). The 3rd plate is a plate packed with lace designs, and I went for some A England stamping, to add that little bit of sparkle ♥

It's summer, but we have weather that feels more like fall already, and I think this combo matches that well. I'm looking forward to wearing more colors that suit the coming seasons - although I hope we get a bit more sun first ;) Below you can see how well the fine details of the plate transferred!

Catrice C02 with A England Sleeping Palace and BornPrettyStore BP-L020.

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UberChic Beauty The Far East

Yesterday I showed you UberChic Beauty's The Wild West plate, today it's The Far East's turn! I'm sure you straight away get some images in mind with a theme like that, let's see below if the plate has those as well...

clickable for an enlargement

From bamboo to a koi, from a little panda to watery images, this plate offers plenty. And with that theme, it won't come as a surprise that there's dragons and symbols and writing as well! The plate combines traditional images with images that feel more modern to me, and it combines intricate designs with designs that'll work just as well as little details or for doublestamping. I think it's a perfect mix of Asian themed designs :)

The plate looks a little smudgy on a few spots, and in case you're wondering: the protective blue foil got a bit stuck on this one (not sure why, the warmth?), it came off easily but left some sticky residue, which I noticed later on the photo. Nothing a little remover won't fix though! And the quality of the plate is just as great as every other UberChic Beauty plate. In fact, I stamped 5 nails at once with the lettering design, without cleaning the plate in between ♥ I started with stamping the text in Dorian Gray, then stamped over that with the image that's on the top row, 2nd from the left, with Virgin Queen. And here's how that turned out:

OPI My Vampire Is Buff with A England Dorian Gray and Virgin Queen and UberChic Beauty plate UC The Far East -01.

You can find all the UberChic Beauty plates on their website. Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful evening!


The product(s) in this post was/were send to me for review. For more information, please have a look at my Disclosure Policy.

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UberChic Beauty The Wild West

UberChic Beauty recently released 4 new plates (yes, they're on a roll!) and I got the pleasure of reviewing them all :) The first one that I'll be showing is 'The Wild West -01', a plate which is completely filled with -you guessed it- wild west related images. Check out the plate further down!

UberChic Beauty offers collections of 3 plates and loose, themed plates. The 4 new additions to the latter are The Wild West, The Far East, Out Of Africa and Love & Marriage. And I'll tell you straight away, their designs all match beautifully with the theme! Here's the first one:

clickable for an enlargement

From cowboy items to Native American feathers and prints, and of course horses and cactuses aren't forgotten. I'm especially loving the prints, but this plate sure offers plenty for themed nails as well! The images have the usual UCB size (which I think is a nice size, it'll work for most of us), and they transfer perfect! For this mani I went with a reversed stamping with one of the prints. I colored it in completely and turned it into a decal, you don't need to worry about visible airbubbles under the decal when it's fully colored :) Easypeasy! Now I just need to learn to color within the lines :D What do you think of these kinda 2 accentnails looks?

Dance Legend #1031 with Konad Black, Essie Angora Cardi, Catrice New York and UberChic Beauty UC The Wild West -01.

You can find all the UberChic Beauty plates on their website, and if I were you, I'd keep an eye on UCB, because I don't think they're done anytime soon with bringing us fantastic products :) You can find them on social media like Facebook and Instagram or simply sign up for their newsletter on the website. Thanks for looking and keep an eye on my blog for the other 3 plates!


The product(s) in this post was/were send to me for review. For more information, please have a look at my Disclosure Policy.

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A touch of color with Bundle Monster dual sided tools

Hey lovelies, just a quick post in between all the foster care! I'll post something about my 3 new fosterkittens soon too, but here's another reversed stamping first :)

Bundle Monster has a set of nail art tools with brushes on 1 side, and dotting tools on the other. The set comes in a black roll up case, with plastic that can be folded up to reveal the 8 tools. I think the plastic is pretty handy, it's not just that folded flap on top, it's behind the brushes as well. It wouldn't be the first time that I loose those little plastic things that slide over the brushes to protect them, and this way they're still somewhat protected and not in direct contact with the fabric of the case!

This set offers plenty variation, from brushes that can be used for cleanup to a pointy dotting tool and a dotting tool without the 'dot'. Especially those last 2 are tools that I know I'll enjoy using! I think it's a handy set, not just for people that use such tools a lot, but also when you don't use brushes or dotting tools as often. You get them all at once with this set and they're easily stored away in the case as well!
One thing I noticed, is that my remover with acetone also removes the paint of the tools. I accidentally let one of them roll through a blob of polish, oops! Then I cleaned it, and well... :D Now I have to say though, I don't think I have any painted wooden tools in my stash that can handle some acetone, but if you want to keep the color, I'd advise to try remover without acetone (I kinda never use that, so couldn't try it) or simply not clean the tools itself. And I now noticed that the detailed information about the set also mentions this: "To Clean: Wipe bristles (not brush handle) only with alcohol or non-acetone based polish removers." My bad, maybe I should pick up some acetone-free remover afterall!

The dual sided nail art tool set set can be bought on the Bundle Monster website and costs $8.99. Here's a direct link to this set!

For this mani I used one of the new Bundle Monster Shangri-La plates, which I reviewed here. I used the smallest dotting tool and the pointy one to color in the design on my stamper, and so far I like the use of the dotting tools more than brushes for such coloring, because I felt that the fine hairs of a brush can easier pick up the design of the stamper, which you don't want. As you can see in some of the lighter purple parts, the little black stripes of the design all stayed in place! Those dotting tools will definitely be my first choice for more reversed designs :)

I then went for a direct stamping with the colored images (so I didn't turn them into decals first). That worked fine and yay for no mess with decals and airbubbles! You just need to press down your stamper and hold it in place for a bit. Just a few of the tiny lines didn't transfer well like that, but for a first attempt at directly stamping a reversed design, I'm impressed with how well that worked! Next time I might wait even longer before stamping it onto the nail, so the colored spots are fully dry as well. Those smudged a tiny bit here and there after transferring the design. I used one of the nail art brushes for some small touch ups, and the most left (on the image above) slanted brush for the cleanup.

OPI My Very First Knockwurst with Konad Black, Catrice Heavy Metallilac and Poison Me, Poison You! with Bundle Monster BM-S104.

What do you think of this mani? It's different than my usual stuff, but I do like it and I'm eager to do more with the reversed technique! And would that set be something you'd be interested in, or would you rather have all tools separate? Thanks for looking and take care ♥

You can find Bundle Monster on the following social media: Facebook - Twitter - Pinterest - Instagram - Google+ - Youtube.

The product(s) in this post was/were send to me for review. For more information, please have a look at my Disclosure Policy.

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New Bundle Monster plate collection: Shangri-La

Hi there! Bundle Monster just released a new plate collection, it's called Shangri-La and consists of 10 square plates, which are sold as a complete set ánd as single plates. I'll tell a bit more about them below, but lets not wait any longer and take a look at them first!

Swirled Utopia

These plates offer so much variety! You can pick a single part of an image, like one of the circles above, and stamp it on all nails. Or go for different, but matching nails! That circle near the bottom right jumps out to me, depending on the colors used, you can maybe make it look like a flower as well (I'm thinking of yellow/white/green). A lot of these plates will be perfect for some dotted details or loose glitters as well.

Everlasting Sun

This plate reminds me a bit of an Aztec print combined with the Aztec Sun Stone, so I think the name of the plate matches well! Grab a bit of the print in black on a gradient, or take the pointy bits around the circle, or simply use one of those half circles at the bottom and stamp them vertically.

Hydras

Again, sooo much options. Stamp a flower, or just those little swirly dots, or that top right circle that looks a bit like a dreamcatcher. These small square plates aren't just cute, they're packed with good stuff!

Cosmic Blossoms

I'll tell you already, when I saw this plate I just had to go for a reverse stamping with it, doesn't it look like a perfect design to add some color to? You'll see my result in an upcoming post :) This is one of my favorite plates of the set, such a happy & playful design!

Amrita

Is this a stunning plate or what?! I'm so in love with it ♥ It's the plate that I used for the mani to go with this post, and I chose it because the lines on this plate are incredibely fine, so I figured it would be a good test. I took the middle flowery thing and the area around it, and stamped a random part with a bit of that flower on each nail. Here's a closeup of one of my nails, to show you how well these tiny lines transferred. The few little flaws that the macro shows are thanks to the user, not the plate, haha.
You see it huge here of course, but I measured my nail to give you an idea, from cuticle to tip 1.4 cm / 0.55 inch. SO much details on such a small area, woah!

Wrapped in Secrets

Yeah, I wasn't done yet with the plates, but I just couldn't resist a macroshot in between! I like how this plate feels a bit repetitive, you can take a very similar image on each nail, but in slightly different sizes. Those little piles of rectangular shapes look great for some added coloring too.

White Lotus

Another beautiful plate, you can combine the different flowers while creating unity thanks to the matching leaves, or take the outer pointy "leaves" of the image on the bottom right and stamp them near the cuticle with the pointy bit towards the tip.

Fountain of Youth

You know I like swirly images, needless to say, I like this plate too! The design indeed feels like flowing water, those areas on the left and right with all the fine lines, lovely. And again those round, flowery designs, I think they're pretty and this collection offers plenty of them :)

Geometric Harmony

I feel like I'm on repeat, but yes, so much options here! Take a small strip of a design, or just randomly stamp a piece of this plate. somehow it all goes well together even though it's all so different. If your nails ain't too long, you can also use the middle square as a full nail design.

Vibrational Breathe

Same as the plate above, this'll be great for small parts, or just taking a big chunk of the image and randomly use it on your nails. This might create nice reverse stamping too, what do you think?


There we have it, 10 beautiful and unique plates, that work fantastic. The plates measure 5.5x5.5 cm (2.16 inch), the designs are slightly smaller than that as you can see. They come with the usual blue foil and protective back. I'm not sure if it's the square shape, or the designs, or a combination of the 2, but these plates feel refreshing! And the detail in them is simply amazing. I think it's really a lovely set, and even more so with their current sale price! You can find the loose plates on the Bundle Monster website, they're $1.99 each. The 10 piece set is now for sale on their site, for $11.99 (normal price $14.99).
What do you think of the Shangri-La collection, and how do you feel about the square shape?


The mani that I did with these is a colorcombo that I used before, as you might've seen on my Instagram I have some fosterkittens again, and they need a lot of attention. So instead of diving in my stash, searching for a nice combo, I just went for the easy route while the kittens were sleeping! What can I say, I simply couldn't resist sharing these plates as soon as the collection was launched :)

OPI My Vampire Is Buff with A England Fotheringhay Castle and Bundle Monster BM-S105.

You can find Bundle Monster on the following social media: Facebook - Twitter - Pinterest - Instagram - Google+ - Youtube.

The product(s) in this post was/were send to me for review. For more information, please have a look at my Disclosure Policy.

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Reversed roses with BPS plates

Hi there! I did a 'reverse stamping' mani the other day with a rose image from BornPrettyStore. When I saw that image, I straight away knew what I wanted to do with it, and I'm glad that it turned out so well! It was quite a bit of work, but I'm really loving the result! :) Here's the finished mani, the plates are further down:

I received 3 plates from BornPrettyStore and all 3 came with a cute cover, blue foil on the front and a rubber back on the large plates, a normal back on the round one. The plates work like a charm, and the size of the full nail images is nice too. The average sizes of the full nail images are 1.5x2.1cm (round plate), 1.45x2.0cm (lace plate) and 1.4x2.5cm (floral plate). I'll of course add them to my comparison later on as well!

You can buy these plates at the BPS website, don't forget to use code ABJ61 for 10% off! Here are the direct links to these plates:
BP-73 (round plate) ~ BP-L020 (lace plate) ~ BPL-024 (floral plate)

And here's a closer look at these plates!

I used the bottom image and the matching small one for today's mani. I like the variation that this plate offers, while staying with the rose theme!

If you're looking for a lace image, this plate should do the trick for you, that's a lot of pretty lace designs right there! The 2 at the top left, and the one with the vertical stripes, seem perfect for a little extra on top of it. Maybe a nail sticker or decal, or perhaps one of those smaller roses from the plate above?

If you do like roses but don't want a plate full of it, this one has lots to offer too! I like the top right design, and the bottom left, that'll be perfect for the coming season. And the one in the middle of the bottom row, pretty! Those 2 on the top row (number 5 & 6 from the left) might match well together, if you like some variation on your nails.



As I said above, I used a rose design of the round plate and went for a reverse stamping. I stamped it in black, but kept it on the stamper, then I colored it in with some nail art brushes and 2 more stamping polishes, before turning it into a decal. I think you can stamp it on the nail right after coloring as well, if you press a bit harder on the stamper and hold it in place on your nail for a little bit. But I wanted to see how it looked with the right side up first, so I used some top coat (Dance Legend Go Fast gave a nice, thin layer for this) to turn them into decals. And it was a good thing that I did so, because some didn't turn out as well! I noticed that you can best use quite a bit of polish on your brush to color the design, if you use too little, the brush might end up picking up the stamped image (in my case, the black outlines). And don't spread the color too much, else it might mix with the stamped design, which created dark red roses without black lines, haha. So just appying a decent amount of color worked best for me.

I'm eager to try more of this technique, however, next time I'd try it with normal polish instead of real stamping polishes. The cleanup from the decals with these highly pigmented polishes wasn't the most pleasant! And I want more stampers now, because it just took a lot of time to wait for each design to be fully dry and ready to be placed on the nail. I bet it works nicer if you can make a couple at once! Lastly, after placing them on the nail and sealing them in with a little top coat, I added a matte top coat to really pull it all together. There's some little flaws in the coloring, and also in the decals itself (applying them on my left hand with barely any bubbles is one thing, but on the right... haha!), but thanks to the matte effect it's hardly visible. Gotta love that stuff! ♥

Dance Legend #1031 with Konad Black, Red and Green and BornPrettyStore BP-73 and Dance Legend Top Satin.

What do you think of these plates? And have you done any reverse stamping? If so, I would love to see it! Links in comments are blocked, but you can upload an image with your comment as well, please feel free to do so :D Thanks for looking!


The product(s) in this post was/were send to me for review. For more information, please have a look at my Disclosure Policy.

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Random Dance Legend swatches (including black peel off!)

Recently I received another awesome Dance Legend package, and here's a bunch of those polishes already :)

Starting with 2 beautiful cremes, both perfect as nail art bases! This is #03 Olga from the Binary collection, which looks darker and a little more muted green than my pics show. A great color that covered in 2 easy coats, no top coat.

Next we have Enamel Gel Effect #1031, a lovely coffee cream that covered again in 2 easy coats, no top coat. I'm so impressed by the Dance Legend cremes, even these lighter colors cover great and apply wonderfully, without streaks!

This is #03 Olga with 1 coat of #02 Lissome from the Leo Skin collection. Lissome has leopard spot-shaped glitters in gold and black , and irregular shaped and sized glitters in what seems to be 2 shades of gold. I finished with 1 layer of Dance Legend Go Fast top coat (more on that one in a future post). This polish did need some fishing, there's plenty of the leopard spot glitters in the bottle, but with the size of them I didn't expect much else tbh. Some found their way to my nails with the normal application, but I also placed some glitters myself.

Another Leo Skin collection polish, #4 Savage, shown on Glitter Base Black. This polish will give full coverage in a layer or 2, but since the glitters already stand out a bit, I figured it would look better to not have them pile up or any, so I started with a smooth base. Savage is packed with golden glitter, which leans a tad bit to the green side, and has lots of golden leopard spot glitter. Again some glitter found its own way onto the nail, some I fished a little for and placed myself. And finished with 1 layer of Go Fast as well.

I do really like the idea of such an easy leopard mani, but since my nails are quite curvy (some nails more than others), they easily make larger glitters like these stand out. Compare the glitter on the top of my pinkie with the glitter on the bottom left of my ringfinger, one stands out a lot, one is almost fully smooth. So I think these will be better for flatter nails, or really placing them all manually and placing them along with the cruves of the nail (like on my ringfinger), not in the opposite direction.

Next we have 2 polishes of the Eden collection, these are clear layering polishes. However, the silvery/white one can probably give full coverage as you can see above. On those 4 swatches, I used 1 coat on my index/middle, and 2 coats on my ring/pink. Full swatches of them below.

Here's 1 coat of #1 Creation Of Man layered on Enamel Gel Effect #1031, finished with Go Fast top coat. Creation Of Man shows mainly as silvery/white on the nail, but it has a hint of gold in there too. The Eden collection has 10 layering beauties, and they're an easy way to add a little extra to a mani :)

Oh my! This is #6 Forbidden Fruit on the Glitter Base Black, finished with Go Fast. Yes, this collection has some delicious duochromes as well! The main colors in Forbidden Fruit are pink and orange, but you can see a little golden, and even a hint of green and brown in there as well. And what I really like, is that they apply so even! This is the result of 1 coat. Shown on a black base, because that makes such colors stand out most, but this looks fantastic on a lot of other colors too!

And here's a brilliant invention, a black peel off base! Black is probably the most used color for glitters and flakies, it makes colors pop, and it just combines so well with everything sparkly! But oh, the hassle to remove them... We already discovered the peel off basecoat, but why not skip that step and go for a colored version? I like the way you think, Dance Legend!

It can give full coverage in 1 slightly thicker coat, but I'm showing 2 coats of Glitter Base Black here (no top coat), since I found that it peels easier with 2 coats. I did notice it tends to crawl up your tips a little bit, but wrapping the tips solved that easypeasy, just like with any other polish shrinkage. Cleanup is a bit tricky (afterall, this isn't just polish, it feels like a mix of polish with peel off, and the clean up of the latter is a bit tricky as well), but it applies so easily that I didn't really have an issue with that :)

And here's how it peels, showing it here with one of the manis that I showed above, but it works just as well with all glitters that I tried so far. The remains are simply removed with a little remover, and it's not as sticky and glue-y as well, the glue-in-disguise peel off. Lovelovelove it! :D

What's your favorite of this post, and do you prefer smaller posts with swatches, or more swatches in a single post like I did here? Thanks for stopping by and take care!

You can buy Dance Legend in their own webshop and in various other webshops, and you can also find Dance Legend on Facebook and Instagram.


The product(s) in this post was/were send to me for review. For more information, please have a look at my Disclosure Policy.

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