Once upon a time...

... in a land far, far away, there was a young woman named Brittany. And she brought us lots of awesome plates! Yeah, I can't say I'm feeling inspired to write a fairytale right now :P But one of UberChic Beauty's latest plates, the Fairytale plate, did inspire me! The plate is packed with fairytale related images, so let's have a look at it, see if you're getting inspired too :)

clickable for an enlargement

This plate seems to be especially perfect for people that enjoy creating little stories on their nails, or that like skittlette manis, because you really can go nuts with all these images! Although I can appreciate a story or skittlette on someone else's nails, I usually prefer all my nails to be the same, or maybe just an accentnail here and there. (I can get a bit restless and it can feel unnatural if they ain't the same/similar and then I just want to take it all off, I suspect it's my autism that's involved there as well, but I'm slowly getting into more variation :)) Having said that, I can totally see what you could do with this plate! You could obviously start your story with the text on the top left, and use that image next to it with a path leading to a castle, and then fill the rest of your story with dragons and knights, or go for the princess route, with the top right swirly image? And I see plenty images to create a Cinderella story! You could also make a knight's armor look with the full nail image on the right, or go for a royal look with crowns, maybe in deep, matte red with shiny gold. The full nail wings on the bottom left can also be used as fire, or just as a random stripey design.

For this mani I stamped the leaves design in green on my Uber Mat, and colored them in with 4 different greens. I then applied a thin coat of the basecolor over the decals, let them dry, and applied a coat of basecolor to my nails to which I applied the decals. If you apply a decal, there's a chance that you get airbubbles underneath, and if you stick with just the clear top coat on the decal, they'll be visible through that top coat. I might have airbubbles under this mani, but because of that layer of color, they ain't visible. I think it's much more relaxed to apply the decals like that! I do notice that these decals can get a bit wobbly from all the polish, and need a few layers of top coat to give a smooth result - or just a layer of matte top coat. That way it'll look smooth without much coats ánd the design will often stand out more as well!

Essence Exits On Your Right with Konad Green, Essence Brazil Jungle, Catrice Run Forest Run!, China Glaze Gaga For Green and W.I.C. By Herôme Malmö, UberChic Beauty plate UC Fairytale-01 and Dance Legend Top Satin.

Do you like stories on your nails? And what do you think of this plate? Let me know what you think, and do feel free to share your manis in the comments (links are automatically marked as spam, but you can upload an image there)! :) Thanks for looking and have a wonderful weekend!

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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Femme Fatale Cosmetics - The Mad Tea-Party Collection *pic heavy*

Femme Fatale Cosmetics is launching a new collection, for which the presale will start tomorrow (August 1st) and will run till the 5th. These beauties arrived just in time and I rushed to get the swatches done, so you can see them before the presale starts! As Femme Fatale Cosmetics says:

"The Mad Tea-Party Collection is based upon a chapter from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. The contrast between muted and vibrant colours with variety of finishes reflects the soberness and eccentricity (respectively) found within the characters in this chapter."

To me this looks like a typical FFC collection, lots of finishes and various colors, often combined into a single polish. Intricate and pretty, and with plenty variety to offer something for most people. Here's a quick look, check out the full swatches further down :)

Let me start by saying that my swatches are all with topcoat, I used a thin topcoat for my swatches, yet most only needed a single layer. A few could do with a second layer. Now let's look at the polishes!

Starting with a very unique polish: Infamous Riddle. Of course almost all polish is unique, but FFC is a brand that often really makes you think 'wow, so unique!', haha! Like many in this collection, this polish had that effect on me too, I haven't seen anything like it before! It's an olivegreen polish, with a hint of gold, and a strong, coppery/pink duochrome. Bonuspoints for looking so smooooth ^^ This covered in 2 easy coats.

Femme Fatale Cosmetics Infamous Riddle

The base of Up Above The World You Fly is a dusty lavender, with a very strong blue duochrome that leans a little green. Those colors always look nice together! The polish is packed with very fine silver glitters, which did make it a little gritty, so this one took 2 coats for full coverage, and 2 layers of topcoat.

Femme Fatale Cosmetics Up Above The World You Fly

My pics of Always Tea-Time aren't showing it as I would've liked, I swatched it really early this morning and the light wasn't optimal yet (unfortunately I didn't have enough time to wait for better light). This was again 2 coats for full coverage, and it's a combo of a taupe base packed with bright magenta pink glitters in various sizes. There's a subtle shimmer in the back as well, as the macroshot shows best. I really like the combo of taupe and bright pink or purple, so it's nice to see them combined into a polish like this!

Femme Fatale Cosmetics Always Tea-Time

Let's continue with March Hare, an golden-brown base (which varies a little from a lighter to a deep, darker color, depending on the angle) with green flash, that makes it look a little olive at times as well. It also has lotsa holographic glitters in different sizes! It looks a little like the larger glitters are sitting on top of the polish, but that's mainly the pics. Having said that, I guess it doesn't come as a surprise that I doubled on topcoat here, and the polish itself also needed 2 coats.

Femme Fatale Cosmetics March Hare

Shown here is -you guessed it- 2 coats of Wonderland, which is a blue base (leans a little muted and a little teal) with a strong magenta pink shimmer - which unfortunately doesn't show well here, this is not the first time I struggle with that beautiful pink/purple shimmer in a Femme Fatale polish! It also has little flakies, I'm pretty sure it's the red to green ones, but because of everything that's going on in the polish, it's a bit hard to see.

Femme Fatale Cosmetics Wonderland

Time for a thermal! This is Two Days Wrong, and the colorchange on my nails during the application fooled me a little, I went for 3 thicker coats but 3 thin should be fine too. It's a light pink (warm) to bright purple (cold) thermal, filled with flakies that came out easily (FFC sure knows how to pack a lot in a polish while keeping it easy to get it all onto the nail!). On the following photos you can see the transition and the cold look.

Sometimes flakies can be really visible on top of a light polish, like you can see little bits of plastic instead of pretty flakies, if that makes sense? Not with this one! it almost looks like the flakies change color too, and they combine perfect with both the pink and the purple.

This is 3 coats of Twinkle, Twinkle, and it sure does match the name, it's very sparkly! This is a blue base with a strong purple shimmer, and packed with the same size and shape glitters, but then in various colors. I think it's purple, light purple and turquoise. It shows a little blue on my pics, the blue base made it harder to pick up the rich purple at the same time :)

Femme Fatale Cosmetics Twinkle, Twinkle

Last, but -oh wow!- certainly not least, Mad As A Hatter. It took 3 coats to give this result, and I can't get over how pretty this is! I'd say this is a dark teal jelly base, with lots of red to green flakies and a red shimmer. Because of the base I used 3 coats, to cover the tips a bit more, but I bet this would work wonders when layered as well.

Femme Fatale Cosmetics Mad As A Hatter

There they are, all 8 polishes of the The Mad Tea-Party collection. The last polish is clearly the winner for me, but I can appreciate all of these creations, because they're done so well! They have a nice application & coverage, and FFC can really make me forget that I'm maybe not always loving some colors on my nails, because their polishes are just so beautiful and unique! They are often a challenge for me and my camera, and having said that: yes, a lot of these are even better in real life :)

If you want to get your hands on any (or all) of these beauties, make sure to order them in time! The presale runs from August 1-5 and they're likely to be available from webshops like Shiro Cosmetics, Color4Nails, Beautometry, Rainbow Connection, Beauty So Fly and Dope Nails. Or just look on the Femme Fatale Cosmetics website! What's your favorite of this collection? Thanks for looking and have a wonderful weekend ♥


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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Simply striped (and 2 DRK Nails plates!)

I've done a couple of more creative manis in the past month, with stamping decals and such, but I never get tired of a simple tone-on-tone either! And I had a nice matte polish standing on my desk, untried, so I teamed it up with an A England polish and one of these pretty DRK Nails plates, to create this simple striped mani.

These plates are from the Cobogo line, and the metal part of the plates measures 6x12 cm. I already showed you 2 other DRK Nails plates in this size in a previous post, and shared about more info about them too. Check out that post for more detailed info :) DRK Nails has a bunch of these 6x12 cm plates (besides their XL plates), and matching cases for these rectangular plates, you can find all of that right here!

These 2 Cobogo plates are packed with geometric designs and I think a lot of them will work great as a bold, black stamping on a holo base, or perhaps a gradient? And because of the shapes, they're also nice to take just a part of an image! Like with one of those circular designs, you could use just 1 circle and apply it to the base of your nail, to take a half moon mani to a new level. For today's mani I went for the striped design of the plate below, and stamped it diagonally. And as I'm used to of DRK Nails, the images are engraved really well and stamp great ♥

I started with 2 coats of a matte polish, that looks a lot more turquoise green than my camera picks up. I used to struggle with purples, which this camera doesn't have an issue with, but oh, my beloved teals and greens... :( I just can't get them in the right shade, they're often way too blue! If you have any tips on that, I'd love to hear them, my attempts so far were all in vain!
Aaanyway, yay for easy covering mattes, they make for such a quick base! I added Saint George with the striped image, top coat and here's the finished look:

Essence Macarena Mint with A England Saint George and DRK Nails Cobogo 2.

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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