Bundle Monster H18 Stamping

I used a plate from Bundle Monster's Holiday Collection for this manicure, H18 which is a love / Valentine's sort of theme, I just used it because I liked the pretty pattern.

 

 

I use Barry M Gelly Hi Shine in Blueberry, a dark blue colour, for the stamping over yesterday's Coloured Speckled manicure and I'm really pleased with how it turned out, the glittery base adds a little extra to the overall look I think.

 

I really like the Holiday Collection from Bundle Monster, despite being themed around certain holidays or events there are tonnes of designs which can be used whenever and aren't just tied into a holiday or event making it a useful set even if you aren't big on tying your manicures to life events.



Candy Canes - Take 2!

I did Candy Cane nails last year and was pretty pleased with how they turned out so I decided to try again this year, I used a slightly different stamp for the stripes and a different base red colour and I think they turned out even better than last year's.  Which is why I have had them on for three days!

 

 

I used Bundles Monster plate BM-423 which is part of the Create Your Own collection for the stripes and then HD10 for the candy cane stamp, the base is Kiko 238.  As usual I used a nail art pen for the white stamping polish as it's a bit thicker than regular polish and I like the effect it gives.

 

 

I really like the stripes, I think they look more candy cane than last years larger solid stripes, they also give a great effect in real life, loads of people have commented on them and asked if they were nail wraps.

 

Last year I had a sparkly glitter base colour but I actually think this manicure works better with just a flat cream under the white as it gives better contrast.

 

I really loved these nails, so much so I didn't want to take them off so they survived a whole weekend and I still have them on today!

 

Snowflakes

Nothing says winter themed manicure like some snowflakes, last year I did two snowflake manicures this one, which was OK, and this one on Christmas day, which I absolutely loved.

I was hoping to sort of recreate the one I loved but I could not for the life of me find which plate I used (I've since worked it out and added a note to the blog post from last year) so I ended up using a combination of two other plates, BM-H02 from their recent holiday collection and HB23 a Bunny Nails Plate which you can see HERE.

I don't mind how it's turned out, I love the colours but would prefer different snowflake positioning, I'd say it's better than my initial attempt but not as good as last year's Christmas day version which I loved.  Still quite pretty though.

I used a white nail art pen to stamp the snowflakes, here's a quick shot of the plates:

Christmas Textured Stamping

This stamping didn't exactly go to plan, it was supposed to look Christmassy but instead I think it looks more like flock wallpaper.  It IS in Christmas colours though so we'll let it through on that.

 

 

I used plate H03 from the Bundle Monster Holiday Collection, it looks like more Christmassy on the plate, I think it's meant to be baubles but that didn't really translate so well onto my textured nail.

 

It's still pretty though, I used Barry M Foil Effect in Gold for the stamp.

 

 

As you can see from some of the pictures I am suffering a bit from wear, the stamping on my index finger and close to the tips is wearing off a bit, probably because I can't top coat the textured polish to make it stay put, it's not too noticeable in person though.

Create Your Own Textured Stamping

Another stamping manicure using the Bundle Monster Create Your Own set today.

 

I used Barry M Silver Foil Effects to stamp over Kiko Starry Black textured polish.

 

I'm not sure this was the best choice of image for over a textured polish as the trees lose a bit of their clarity, something more abstract might work better.  Nonetheless I quite like the effect, from a distance it looks a bit like crackle polish.

 

I used plate 407.

Textured Stamping

I was a bit sceptical about stamping over textured polishes at first but it actually works really well, for today's manicure I used BM-422 from the Create Your Own Collection.

 

 

I used Barry M Gold Foil for the stamping and I'm really pleased with how it turned out.

 

 

The simple hexagon design compliments to base colour and the textured adds an extra element to the stamping which makes it a bit different.

 

I'm also really pleased with the wear time on the Barry M textured polish, I'm on day three now and there is only the smallest amount of tip wear which for a textured polish and no topcoat I think is great.



Satsuma Stamping

I decided to stamp over yesterday's manicure to get another days wear out of it, although in hindsight I wish I hadn't bothered.

 

 

I used Barry M Satsuma, another of the Gelly Hi Shine polishes, to stamp with and although it works beautifully I wasn't keen on the colour combination.  I thought grey and orange might work quite well but in reality it just went a but sludgy looking.

 

As you can see I also didn't make the best job of stamping and two of the images ended up very smudged which is annoying.

 

Generally I think stamping is a great way to jazz up a plain and neutral nail but in this case plain and neutral was much better than the stamping.

 

Kiko 342 Stamped

A simple stamp today using one of the Create Your Own set from Bundle Monster.  You may be able to tell this is also a manicure from a few days back, I didn't have a chance to post it before my Halloween themed nails so I'm sneaking it in now instead. :)

 

 

I used plate BM-406 and the knotted heart pattern on the left hand side.

 

 

Aside from the rather messy clean up I'm pretty pleased with how this turned out, it's nice and subtle but adds a bit of extra interest.

 

I used Barry M Blue Plum to stamp, the original dark blue / navy polish from the collection which I think might now be called Blueberry?

 

 

 

Funny Bones

More Halloween nails today, this time a skeleton theme...

 

 

I used a white nail pen to stamp with as I find it gives the most opaque white colour for stamping.

 

I used two different plates, both of which I purchased from Bunny Nails, you can read about them HERE.

 

Here's a close up of the plates I used:

 

 

I'm pretty impressed with these plates and how well they stamp my one issue is that the images are quite big for my nails, my nails are particularly short at the moment but even if they were a bit wider I would struggle to fit a lot of them on.  If you don't have tiny dinky nails they're fab though.

Halloween Skittles

I decided to use the Bundle Monster Holiday Collection to do another Halloween manicure, this time a mixture of stamped images over orange and white base nails (Sinful Snow Me White & Bary M Gelly in Satsuma) stamped with more Satsuma and black and white nail art pens.

 

 

Although I'm not 100% pleased with how the manicure turned out (or the state of my nails at the moment) I do love the images from these stamping plates, so far the Holiday Collection has been great and there's pretty much something in there for every occasion.

 

As with all the Bundle Monster plates the images transfer really well and are super easy to work with so if you're thinking ahead to Thanksgiving manicures, or Christmas I'd definitely say give these a shot, they're up to the usual BM standard and a great selection of images.



Bundle Monster 419

Another Bundle Monster plate today, this time BM419 from the Create Your Own collection.  I chose the delicate flower pattern from the bottom of the plate to stamp over yesterday's polish.

 

 

I used Barry M Gelly Hi Shine polish for the stamping, Watermelon the dark green colour, these are definitely my go to shades when it comes to stamping as they work so well.

 

I like how this stamping turned out, it's fairly subtle but adds a bit of interest to the plain cream polish and the colours go really well.



Bundle Monster BM-402

I decided to use another plate from Bundle Monsters Create Your Own collection today, this time I chose the design on the left of plate BM-402.

 

 

I stamped over Barry M Lychee with a Bourjois black, it's not the best black stamping polish as it does come out rather washed out but it works well enough, I think.

 

These were sort of meant to have an Indian or Henna type feel to them but I'm not sure I quite achieved that. :)  I always struggle to get these sort of designs lined up evenly so they are not as neat as I'd like them to be but I think they still look alright.



Octonails!

This manicure is shamelessly copied from a picture I saw on FB, which I now can't find to give credit to, so sorry!  If it was you or you know who did the original design then let me know in the comments.

 

I decided to stamp over yesterday's Amethyst Velvet Goth polish and I was keen to try out a plate from the new Bundle Monster collection so having seen this cute design elsewhere I decided to copy.

 

 

Octopus nails!  I used two images from Bundle Monster plate BM 401.  A full octopus design and another tentacle design to give the impression the octopus was all over my nails.

 

It's just as well that there was a separate tentacle design because the full octopus was WAY too big to fit on my nails, despite that I'm pretty pleased with how this turned out

 

I think the tentacles would also be great for a Halloween style manicure too so I might try that out soon since we're getting to that time of year.

 

 

 

Bundle Monster - Create Your Own - Stamping Plate Collection

Today I have a post about Bundle Monster's New Create Your Own Collection which I have just received in the post.  The collection is the result of Bundle Monster asking fans what sort of images they wanted to see on stamping plates. 

 

If you click on the picture you'll be able to see the images larger in another window.

 

I have to say I'm not blow away by these plates, they're ok and there are definitely a few good designs but considering these are meant to be created by nail stamping fans I'm not that impressed.  I saw loads of suggestions and comments on Facebook and blogs relating to this collection and there were some great ideas so I was expecting them to be super amazing plates, and they're not, they're good but not mind blowing.

 

Saying that the plates are only $16.50 for 25 so they aren't expensive and there are a decent selection of images, there are lots of nice full nail designs which is great as they're my favourite kind.  Bundle Monster charge an extra $8.50 to ship to the UK which I thought was pretty steep, however, my order arrived after just 6 days so it's hard to be annoyed at shipping costs when things get halfway across the world in less than a week.

They don't come in a little box like the other newer BM collections, instead they come in a plastic bag, mine was already beginning to burst before I opened it so not great for storing them in.

 

Here are a few of my favourite images from this set, I love the words on plate 405 and the little origami crane is cute too.

 

I like the tree sort of design at the top of plate 407 and the delicate patterned hand.

 

The skyline and fingerprint full nail designs on 414 are great too.

 

Overall I'm happy with this set, the designs aren't amazing but there are some good ones and for under £16 (incl the P&P) I think I should get a good deal of use out of them.