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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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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Blue roses with Dance Legend Go Fast and Top Satin

Hey all, here's a mani that didn't go as planned, but I'm liking the result nevertheless! I wanted to make a blue watercolor base, but that already went wrong on the first nail. Lesson 1, don't apply the drops of polish straight from the bottle, you might end up with a huge blob instead of a small drop, haha! So instead of a real watercolor base (apply basecolor, then top coat to protect the base, add small drops of color, take a brush with remover and 'paint' it on the drops of color to create a watercolor effect), it looks more like saran wrap meets remover, or something. I'll tell more about this mani and the top coats further down!

I used Go Fast top coat on the basecolor, and after creating the blue effect on top, I used it to seal that in. Then I stamped the black rose design, and used Go Fast again. When that was dry, I used Top Satin to finish the mani.

My thoughts: Go Fast indeed does dry quite fast, and it's a thin top coat, which probably helps with that as well. The application is easy, however, you really have to be careful with nail art! Since it's so thin, it's hard to apply it floating, and that makes it easier to streak or smudge your design a bit. The top coat couldn't really smoothen the slightly bumpy blue base with just 1 coat, but the thin consistency makes it perfect for nail art with a lot of layers that you want to seal in with top coat in between, to keep the finished result thin as well. And as you'll see in a future post, it's also a nice one for stamping decals!

Top Satin does exactly what you'd expect of a matte top coat, after applying a decent layer of Top Satin, it gives a satin matte finish as shown in my pictures. It applies smooth and easy, and if you want just a touch of satin finish, you can apply a really thin coat. I like this finish, and how the top coat allows for some variation with the finished result. I always wear a normal top coat between nail art and matte top coat, to prevent the latter from smudging, and Go Fast & Top Satin made a nice team for that! You can find these top coats in various webshops and of course on the Dance Legend website.

Dance Legend Velvet #655 with OPI I Saw...U Saw...We Saw...Warsaw, A England Galahad, Essence Forever Mine, Konad Black with UberChic Beauty plate UC1-02 and Dance Legend Top Satin.

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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Polynesian Tribal

Morning! I'm glad I still have some unposted manis, because summer has arrived, and it's way too warm to sit inside and polish! So I'll be outside today, with my inflatable kiddie pool :D In the meantime I do have a summery mani for you, the basecolor of this one has to be one of my favorite blues, it's such a vibrant color! I couldn't capture it well, my camera tones it down a little but ah well. I'll show swatches of it soon too, and explain more of why I like it so much!

The stamping polish is a little sheer for stamping, but used on a blue base you can't really tell in real life. Most of my polishes that work for stamping are shimmers, but I like a creme stamping at times as well! So it'll have to do, haha. The image that I used is on one of Bundle Monster's Polynesia sets, the Traditional Polynesia set to be precise. I've reviewed the set in this post. Love this image!

Wishing you a great day, thanks for stopping by :)

Dance Legend #1039 with OPI I Saw... U Saw... We Saw... Warsaw and Bundle Monster BM-XL115.

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BornPrettyStore plate & rectangular stamper

Hey lovelies :) BornPrettyStore recently send me 2 new plates and a new stamper, and I'm happy to show them, BPS really upped their game! More on that below, let's look at the mani first:

I've been using BPS products for many years now, and I remember back in the days, I think BPS just started with plates and they weren't always great. At times they had sharp edges, the images weren't always transferring as well, and some plates had really tiny full nail images. But throughout the years they kept improving their plates ánd kept adding designs. They now have LOADS of plates that are of good quality and still very affordable, but their latest package contained 2 newer plates that went even further than that: these 2 came with their own cover with a fancy looking design and a protective cover/rubber plate on the back. But most important, the images themselves have a nice size and transfer great!

I will show the round plate some other time, but here's a closer look at the rectangular plate. This is plate BP-L015, or Forest Pattern Trees on their website. This plate costs $4.79. I'm loving the designs! I can see myself using the image that I used today over and over again, but that's not the only image that I can envision on my nails!
The images are 2.0x1.45 cm (you can see the size on my comparison as well), and this size is perfect for my nails. Not too small to make me have to put effort into fully covering each nail or having to doublestamp, yet not too big to loose a lot of each image. Happy with this plate! :)

Another item that BPS send me is this stamper, it comes as a set of a stamper and a scraper, but I didn't receive the latter so I can't say much about that. If you order this set, i'm sure you'll get both though! The set costs $3.74 and can be found here. If you order anything, don't forget to use coupon code ABJ61 for 10% off!

As you can see, the size is perfect for the images on the plate shown above, and I think it'll be a helpful tool when you really want to stamp straight. You can line up your image perfect with the stamper, and then line it up against your nail as well. The stamper is quite shiny, but as always with a new stamper, I gave it a gentle filing for the first use and that took the shine away, making it look more like the stampers we're used to. It works great and the white part fits perfect in the black holder, without falling out or sinking in too deep.

I've shown the big round stamper before as well, it's also a BPS stamper and it's my favorite nowadays, I don't use anything else anymore! I used the Konad doublesided stamper for many years, but ever since I got the feeling for the big, squishy BPS stamper, the Konad one feels odd, haha. I'm glad the rectangular stamper is now a part of my stash as well, it's the same squishy thing but in a different shape. Tip: I've noticed that these squishy stampers can easily attract fluffy bits (like tiny pieces of fabric), and cleaning them with remover isn't always handy. But I think that'll eventually dry out your stamper anyway, and a lint roller works SO well to clean your stamper! So nowadays I work with squishy stampers and lint roller, and I wouldn't want it any other way anymore :)

And here's the nails again!

OPI Thanks A Windmillion with A England Proserpine and BornPrettyStore BP-L015.

What do you think of the plate, and what's your favorite stamper? Thanks for looking and have a lovely 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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Dance Legend Excalibur & Sword Of Mercy

Hey hey :) Here's 2 polishes of the Dance Legend Steel collection, a collection with 12 metallic polishes. When I think of metallics, I think of stamping, so of course I had to test stamping with these! They do work, however, these 2 aren't 1-coaters and are slightly thin, so I'll list them as somewhat sheer on my stamping polish page. I think they might be less suited for images with large areas, on such images it shows better when a polish isn't covering as well, and on darker basecolors, where you'd want perfect coverage. You'll find swatches and more about these 2 stamped manis further down!

Dance Legend Excalibur.

Excalibur covered in 2 thicker coats, and is shown here without base/top coat. As always with metallics, little bumps and ridges on the nail show well, and a ridgefilling basecoat would help to make the result as smooth as possible.

OPI My Very First Knockwurst with Dance Legend Excalibur and UberChic Beauty plate UC1-03.

Dance Legend Sword Of Mercy.

Again 2 thicker coats, no base/top coat. In case you're wondering, the less good transfers (like the little holes in the dots here and there) aren't caused by these polishes or the plate, but by me trying to work with plastic scrapers! I've always used metal scrapers, and no matter what kind of plastic a scraper is made of, I tend to scrape worse with it, getting small gaps in the design. But I'd rather not damage my plates anymore, so I figured to keep practicing :) The dotted image below is one that I didn't really notice before, it didn't stand out between the other designs on the plate, yet when I noticed it I wondered why. It's such a cute and easy dotted image! I think I'll be using it again soon, don't you think it'll be perfect for a pastel Spring mani?

Essence Enter Wonderland with Dance Legend Sword Of Mercy and UberChic Beauty plate UC1-03.

If you love metallics, this collection offers you various colors, and even though they're a bit thin, they aren't runny and apply easily. They dry fast as well, so that's all fine! But if you use metallics just for stamping, I'd choose other ones, simply because I don't think these'll work as well on all colors and with all images. Thanks for looking!

As always, you can find the Dance Legend polishes on their website and in various other webshops.


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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Tropical purple

Morning! Here's a stamped mani with a tropical floral image from Bundle Monster's Secret Garden plateset, and I went with 2 purples that both lean a lot to the blue side. Especially the basecolor is more periwinkle than true purple, and it makes for a great nailart base!

OPI You're Such A Budapest with A England The Blessed Damozel and Bundle Monster plate BM-720.

I don't think I already showed how well The Blessed Damozel stamps, but it clearly has no problems with it at all! Thanks for looking and take care :)

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