Recent NOTD: OPI DYJLOPI and New Stamping Plates

First off, I am sorry about the ungainly abbreviation in the title of today's post, but Dutch Ya Just Love OPI was just too long to given that I wanted to mention the stamping plates, too. And no, I am not putting the question mark after that name, or the apostrophe before Ya. Most of you reading this know how I feel about punctuation in polish names: Do. Not. Want. Most of you also know how I feel about purple, so it probably doesn't suprise you that Dutch Ya Just Love OPI was one of my picks from the Holland collection. It's a warm purple with gold and rose shimmer. Two coats gave me full coverage (as with all my NOTD posts, there's also base and top coat here).







After a couple days, this was just tempting me to jazz it up somehow but instead of turning to glitter or crack, I grabbed Sally Hansen Chrome Nail Makeup in Amber Chrome and some stamping plates I'd recently added to my collection.

I picked up the Salon Express Nail Art Stamping Kit at CVS. It's got the "As Seen on TV" logo on it, but I hadn't seen it on TV, probably because I watch almost no tv when I can't zip through the commercials—all hail the DVR. This kit comes with 5 plates, a scraper (which I won't use), a plate holder (ditto), and a two-ended stamper (both ends are the same color but one is smaller than the other for easier placement of small designs).



Of the Salon Express five plates, one has overall designs and the other four have individual motifs.



The overall nail designs on the Salon Express plate are narrower than on a Konad plate (Konad on the left, Salon Express on the right, still with its protective film on).



The other new plates in my life are in the Red Angel set, which is available on Amazon. There are 21 plates here, with a wide range of designs. Their full nail ones are pretty comparable to Konad in size.





I couldn't decide between Salon Express and Red Angel to try first, so I used one from each set to plus my mani. I chose a full nail design from Red Angel plate RA105 for most of my nails, then doubled stamped a motif from Salon Express SE20 on my ring finger for an accent. In the photo below, I'm holding the Salon Express stamper so you can get an idea of its size.



Both brands of plates worked fine; any wonkiness in the transfer is my own fault. Here's the best image I got from RA105:



I was actually pretty pleased with how my ring finger came out using SE20:



I really need to spend more time practicing my stamping, but it's hard to fit in with all the other stuff I want and need to do.