I read somewhere that dark florals are very in at the moment, not that I have any idea about the world of fashion and what is “in”, I live in Wild Bangarang leggings and Jordandene tank tops because, well, comfy. But, when I saw the XL-040 stamping plate from Beauty Big Bang I really wanted to do something “on trend” with some dark floral nail art.
I started with a base of Barry M Black Forest, then I pulled out what was left of my old Danglefoot Nail Polish neons from the Live Colourfully collection way back in 2016 and got to reverse stamping. I am looking forward to seeing what neons come out this spring/summer. The end result didn’t turn out exactly as I had imagined it but I am still kind of here for it.
XL-040 has 17 images of flowers and leaves that you can use in different way, all great for regular stamping and reverse stamping, some will cover the entire nails and some are smaller images. There is also one blank block that is meant to help you do gradients. I have the Lina Make Your Mark 03 plate that has the gradient block on it and I have never managed to get it working, it does have an etching error where there is a raised line right near the middle of the block so you don’t get an even scrape which messes up the whole thing. So I honestly thought I would have no problem with this plate because it is all etched perfectly. But I was wrong haha, I just cannot get the hang of it, I’m not sure why, maybe I am scraping at the wrong angle (although I did try quite a few different angles) but every time I do more than one scrape it just scrapes all the polish off.
I practised a fair amount though and did manage to get enough good, gradient scrapes for a mani, but then I promptly had a fall and ruined all the nails but one! For this majestic nail I used Barry M Siren and Barry M Mustard for the gradient, and I did the stamp twice so I had full nail coverage and it did kind of look like a gradient, I’m sure loads of you can do it way better than I did. I stamped over it using Moyou Black Knight and was kind of going for a 70’s look.
You can find this plate here for £2.73/$3.59 and don’t forget to use my code PLUS10 to get 10% off your Beauty Big Bang order.
:)x
