Nail Art Stamping Plates Biography
Source(Google.com.pk)
Hey stamperistas,
Today we're going to get into another one of my epic reviews this time from the wildly successful release of Born Pretty Store brand plates. As my followers may know from reading prior posts I have put up announcements for every release and also pointed out the differences between plates that were re-designed from the initial release. Today I'm going to be focusing on only the first ten plates from the series. I will also be comparing the initial BornPretty plates to the newer and revamped BP plates. If you don't know what I'm referring to please go ahead and read here. Otherwise with so much material to cover let's get started! As usual my review will be divided into sections regarding sizing swatches etc so if there is a section you would like to read feel free to skip ahead. And please leave comments and feedback! Let's go...
A little about the brand for those that aren't as familiar or obsessive about these things as I am. Born Pretty Store has been around for years now working in conjunction with various bloggers around the globe, yours truly included, to bring us fabulous nail art and makeup products at super reasonable prices. Their plates have always been of the fauxnad variety until 2-3 months ago when Born Pretty Store decided to launch their own brand of plates. This first launch featured plates labelled as BornPretty xx. These plates were later redesigned to increase the size of the initially rather petite sized images and were henceforth labelled as BP xx. To date BPS has released about 30 plates including their newer rectangular LO plates that I won't be reviewing here.
So here's the story with the backs. When the plates were initially released they were not labelled with the Born Pretty store logo that now resides on the back of each plate. Prior to the labelled backs they were simply covered in a black colored paper as you can see below. The newer BP plates all have the logo and website on them. This is an important point to distinguish between dupe/fake plates and the originally manufactured plates.
General Dimensions
The plates themselves measure 5.5 cm tall x 5.5 cm wide, and feature between 3-6 full sized nail images. These images "kiss" for lack of a better word on the plate so when I measured out the size I measured from the extreme outer edge to extreme outer edge of each design. In addition several of the plates feature psuedo landscape images or are almost landscape images with smaller accent images thrown in for good measure.
Full Nail Image Size Comparison
The images to vary a bit as you can see there are plates with landscape style images and then those that are full sized nail images and accents. The original BornPretty plates have full size nail images that measure 1.4 x 1.2 cm length by width. Obviously these images are extremely small. Lol I think unless you have small children at home you won't be getting much use out of these plates because even with a marshmallow stamper there will be way too much distortion to stretch these images out to fit longer nails.. However the revamped BP plate full nail size images measure 2.0 x 1.5 cm length by width and larger for the more landcape style images. I've come to think of this measurement as standard i.e. at this length usually most users short and medium length will not have a problem . If you have longer nails like I do you can use a marshmallow to slightly stretch the images or stick with the landscape style images, but I think most ladies will be satisfied with these revamped plates.
BornPretty (original) 1.4 x 1.2 cm
BP (revamped) 2.0 x 1.5 cm
MoYou London Plate Pro 08 (non-XL) - 1.5 x 1.3 cm
MoYou London Plates Explorer 10 (XL) - 2.2 x 1.6 cm
Bunny Nails HD B - 2.0 x 2.5cm
MJ Plate VIII - 1.7 x 2.2cm
Fab Ur Nails Fun 4 - 1.7 x 2.2 cm
Vivid Lacquer 007 - 2.0 x 2.0 cm
Cheeky Jumbo 2013 - 1.5 x 2.0 cm
Bundle Monster CYO - 1.7 x 1.9 cm
Cici & Sisi - 1.5 x 2.0 cm
If you want a more extensive list of stamping plates to compare these image sizes too don't forget to check out my Full Nail Image chart here.
The Images
As with all my reviews I used Wet N' Wild Black Creme and my gold standard XL marshmallow stamper from Bunny Nails (3 years prior) or as in this case my marshmallow stamper from Magno Nails to swatch out my images. I only switch to Konad Special Stamping polish or Mundo de Unas in the event I am unable to pick up an image. I did that once for one of the BP revamped plates which has an asterick as annotated below.
Again for those that don't know the reason I choose to stamp with Wet N' Wild Black Creme for my swatches is because it's cheap and readily available. Furthermore it is the lowest quality polish I can use for stamping. What does that mean? It means I don't expect images generated by WnW to have near the clarity of those generated using a polish designated for stamping. Stamping polishes allow an image to stamp with even more clarity and crispness than regular polish. Period. In short if I have a plate that stamps well with WnW polish this is my assurance that indeed the etching on these plates is excellent enough to support stamping with a polish that is not meant for that purpose.
Stamping Polish Comparisions
I decided to once again give stamping polish comparisons across various brands of polish with 2 plates with fine details. I chose BP 07 and BornPretty 07. I did this so that you can see these plates will pretty much stamp well with whatever polishes you have lying around. Of course whether they have a good opacity or crispness depends entirely on the polish itself.
Stamping Polish Key:
WnW = Wet n' Wild Black Creme
MdU = Mundo de Unas in Black (#1)
Konad = Konad Special Polish in Black Gold
FabUrNails = FabUrNails in Black
Rica = Rica Blackout
DRK = DRK Nails in Bright Blue
WnW FM = Wet N' Wild Fantasy Makers Darkest Hour (from last year)
SH Insta Dri = Sally Hansen InstaDri in I-rush Luck
Dashica = Dashica Stamping Polish in Copper
Mentality = Mentality Polish in Tempest
Handy = Handy Nail Art Stamping Polish in Blood Red (totally made this name up)
Final Impression
So what's the bottom line here folks? Born Pretty Store has made a strong showing launching plates, after resizing, that have some creative images and also useful basics. I always question a bargain because let's be honest sometimes a bargain isn't all its touted to be. I worried that my plates would not have very good etching. However with the exception of BP05, which I think may be a touch shallow and this is easily corrected by use of a true marshmallow stamper and Mundo de Unas polish, the etching was/is superb! You can see even in in the stamping polish comparisons all the details are apparent even with the least opaque polishes.
I can safely say if you were hesitating about purchasing these plates don't. Definitely get the newer revamped BP plates since the the older, and I believe now discontinued, BornPretty plate images are so small that I feel only a small number of ladies will be able to use these plates successfully outside of the larger landscape-like images.. However if you did get the older ones and the newer ones like myself you can always pass them off to your daughters or other children you may know since the etching is excellent and they would make a nice gift. I'm glad I waited until I had both to post a review otherwise based on the image size of the first release alone my review would have been scathing lol. That said I am so excited to start using these plates. Several of the images are so inspiring that I have a lot of ideas broiling in my head that are waiting to get out!
If you are interested in purchasing these plates you can get them at the Born Pretty Store website or Amazon. If you decided to go the official store route you can save 10% off your order by using my code DMB10. The official store site also has free shipping while shipping at Amazon will cost you .99cents not bad but just forewarning you. Hell just go to the official store and use my code! Lol. Anyway I hope this review was helpful. Please leave comments and feedback and tell me about your own experiences with these plates thus far!
