Review and How-To: MoYou-London Artist Collection 02 & 04

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Hello there!

I'm back with my next review/how-to of MoYou-London plates. It's after Christmas so I am now allowed to play with my MoYou-London plates I bought with my Christmas money!! Yay!!!

Today we're going to talk about Artist Collection 02 and Artist Collection 04; both of these are inspired by the artist Gustav Klimt.

First up, of course, here is the video I made about the plates:

And next, some still shots of the plates. First the full plates:

Artist Collection 04: Inspired by Gustav Klimt's The Kiss

Artist Collection 02: Klimt-esque images

And then some shots closer up:

Artist Collection 02: The image at bottom left is a little smaller than the similar portion on the 04 plate

Artist Collection 02

Artist Collection 04

Artist Collection 04

And then finally before we get to the how-to-use portion, here is a comparison of both plates with a standard Konad plate so you can get a feel for the size of the images:

Artist Collection

Artist collection 02 v. Konad

As you can see, the full-nail images are generous in size compared to the Konad plate, so you shouldn't have problems covering your nails unless you have really, really long nails. But, be careful! This is a plate from their XL collection; not all of the plates in the shop have full-nail images this big; they also have some plates with more images that are smaller. Be sure to check whether or not you're looking at an XL plate before you buy, if this matters to you. :)

Okay, let's get down to business--how to use the collage-style Artist Collection 04!

To recap my stance on the collage-style plates, I believe they are extremely versatile and give you a ton of creative flexibility. The only skill you need, other than regular stamping ability, is the ability to isolate images; you can see my tutorial on this by clicking here. But you probably won't even need that too much with this particular plate, because it doesn't have a lot of images to isolate, it's more about patterns.

So what can you do with this plate?

1) You can use any of the individual patterns to create a manicure:

I've circled four patterns in the left half of the plate that have areas well large enough to use for full-nail patterns without struggling. I count 8 different patterns you should be able to use with no problem, and three more than you can use if you're a little more careful. So just on that basis alone, there is plenty on this plate to make it worth buying.

Not creative enough for you? Okay, let's try something else.

2) You can create a pattern-transitioning-into-another-pattern effect:

Each collage-style plate has its own opportunities. One I love on this plate is there are two patterns that transition into new patterns; how cool would it be to have the one pattern switch into the other across your manicure? So, say you put the image in the left circle on your thumb and index finger, then the image in the middle circle on your middle finger, and the image in the right circle on your ring and pinkie finger--how cool would that look?? And, you could do something similar with the square-to-circles images right above that (the portion that is supposed to be the lady's dress).  If you have longer nails you might get a bit of the boundary line in your pattern, but I think you could purposefully have that running along it, and that would make it even cooler. :)

3) Easy patchwork nails:

Another thing this plate is really good for is it has a lot of areas where pattern intersect, which gives lots of opportunities for patchwork-style nails. I've shown a number of them above, especially places where more than two patterns meet; there are many more places where just two patterns meet. You can have one patchwork nail that shows patterns meeting, and then individal patterns on the other nails; you can have a patchwork effect on each nail; you can skittle the night away.

4) You can build your own version of The Kiss. 

This is what I did in yesterday's manicure, which I'll show again below (if you want full details on the mats used, you can find that post by clicking here). In most of the collage-style plates, you can build a scene of some sort, and usually multiple scenes. This one is a little more limited in that respect, but you can still use it that way. And, when you pair it with plate 02, you can use it to create your own version of a couple of Klimt's other masterpieces, as well (which is one of the reasons I chose to review these plates together).

Here is the original I wanted to pull elements from:

(Source)

Here is my manicure:

And here is where I stamped to create it:

I wanted to get the woman's face, along with the man's profile kissing her, and the hands on her face. This was fairly easy to do, but if you have worries about aligning images on your nails, check out my tutorial on how to align images by clicking here to see if that helps. I wanted to bring in the rectangles and irregular circles from Klimt's original work; I also wanted to keep the feel of having different panes of pattern, so on my ring finger I purposefully picked up a section that had two different patterns on it.

So there you have a few ideas on how to use this plate, or similar plates. There are certainly a ton more, but this will get you started...Also, if you find you're having a hard time picking out areas that you think would look good on the nail, Chit Chat Nails recently posted a very neat idea to help you visualize how a section will look on your nail; cut a nail-sized section out of a piece of paper, and then you can move that around on the plate and see what looks good to you. :)

I hope this has been helpful for you! Big holiday hugs as we head toward the new year. :)
M.

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