Barry M Black Multi Glitter & Pirates!

This is Barry M's new Black Multi Glitter, it's an opaque black polish with holographic glitter through it, unfortunately although it applies well and looks quite pretty on the nail it's not very exciting or very glittery:

It's a little better under strong lighting but still not as glittery as I'd hoped:

I decided to use it as a base for stamping and added a pirate theme with my new QA stamps, 5 and 8.

 

Which fitted in nicely with Adventures in Stampings theme for his week which was 'Favourite New Stamp'.

My First QA Image Plates for Stamping!

While browsing various sites online I came across QA Image Plates, I really liked some of the designs so I decided to make an early birthday purchase for myself and try some out.  I ordered mine through Bunny Nails e-crater store after seeing pictures of the plates on her blog.  I've since discovered that you can also buy them on eBay, through different sellers, but I am very happy with how the transaction went so if I was ordering more I think I would go back to Bunny Nails.

The plates arrived in a padded envelope, inside of which was this adorable Hello Kitty bag with my plates in, I do love it when people make that little bit of extra effort with wrapping it makes things so much more exciting to open:

Inside the Hello Kitty bag were the plates, each in their own little bag, complete with blue sticker to protect them:

Then, minus their protective layers:

I'm really pleased with my choices and can't wait to try them out, here are some close ups of what I selected:

I can't wait to try stamping with these so hopefully I'll be posting some new stamping manicures using them very soon.

UPDATE (10th October 2012):

 

I thought I should do a little update on this post now that I have used most of the plates at least once.  They have all stamped beautifully so far, the images are crisp and even and have transferred well onto the nail.  They work equally well with my Konad stamper and my XL Stamper (also a Bunny Nails purchase but from eBay this time) and there doesn't seem to be any issue with what sort of polish I use on them.

 

Any issues I've had have been with my stamping technique rather than the plates, you can see some of the manicures I've done using them if you click on the QA and QA Stamping Plate tags under this post.  I love the designs I've chosen as they were all a little different from the plates that are normally on offer. My favourite so far is probably QA18 because I love the full nail designs and find them very flexible with regards to the types of looks you can create but the moustache plate (QA28) also has a special place in my heart as it's so super cute, I can't wait to use it for my Movember manicure next month!

 

So, in short, great plates and no problems at all when ordering, so definitely a seller and plate brand I'll be happy to use again in the future.