Review, How-To and Before & After: MoYou-London Landscape/MotherNature Collection 06

(Products in this post were purchased with my own money.)

Hello!!

I'm back today with a review and how-to-use MoYou-London's Mother Nature 06 plate, previously known as Landscape Collection 06. The video I did for this contains three plates total, and I've already posted it, so you may have seen it before...but here it is again in case you haven't, or want a refresher:

Aaand next we have the stills:

Full shot of Landscape/Mother Nature 06

Left side of Landscape/Mother Nature 06

Left side of Landscape/Mother Nature 06

And, of course, a comparison with Konad so you can get a feel for the relative size of the images:

Note that the balloons and houses (most of them) will fit onto your nails without too much problem, and the design areas in the mountains are large enough that you should be able to get enough to do full-nail look on your nails if they aren't too long. But, in my experience so far, this is the plate that has been the most tricky in terms of using those patterns--some of the spaces are a little tighter than on other plates. But it can still be done, depending on what you're hoping to do.

A final note on using this plate. I found that in some areas that were a bit more tight, it was a little trickier to pick up clean images. If you find that you have this issue, there are a couple of things that make it easier. First, try using a plastic scraper or a credit card; the softer edge on these scrapers won't catch as much on the engraving. The downside of this is you may have to scrape twice, and work a little faster. Another thing I found was helpful was to roll my stamper over the image rather than just come directly down on it; normally I prefer the downward motion, but in this case, rolling may improve your pick-up.

On to the How-To-Use portion of today's journey!

This is one of the more straight-forward of the MoYou-London Collage plates. For the most part, you'll be able to make great use of this plate without too many shenanigans, and probably only need to know how to isolate an image (in addition to basic stamping, of course). If you're not sure how to do that, check out my tutorial on it, by clicking here.

So how can you use this plate? As always, I'm sure you all can come up with lots more ideas, but here are some to get you started:

1) A beautiful hot-air balloon manicure. There are a ton of balloons here to choose from. The easiest way to use them is to stamp in one color (e.g., black or silver), and add some decoration. A nail brush and/or some dotting tools can add a ton of detail without a ton of hassle. There are even two sets of matching balloons in different sizes, so you can coordinate that way if you want to. These images are also perfect for making decals.

2) A neighborhood village scene. You can do this in any color scheme, but how cute would this be for a Christmas village! There's a building that could either be a town hall or a church, depending on how you decorate it, and if you put the buildings with snow drifts and a snowman or two, you'd have a beautiful festive scene. These also would be wonderful for making decals, because you can paint the houses any color you want, and decorate them accordingly.

3) A mountain landscape. This is the manicure I showed you last Monday. Here it is again to refresh your memory:

To make this, I first stamped the three mountain tops; this is pretty hard to get wrong because your mountain can be as big or as small as you need it to be, based on the size of your nails. Next, on the ring finger I wanted a little more visual interest, so I selected an area where two mountains intersected. Finally, I picked up the birds and clouds to complete the scene. Here are the portions of the plate I used, circled approximately where I hit them with my stamper:

4) Use portions of the images as design elements. Sure, there are mountains and balloons, and houses, and trees here. But don't forget the pretty patterns inside of the mountains--those make great full-nail images on their own (look at the spray of blossoms in the middle of the mountain second from the left)--and there are fun design elements here, too. The trees on the right could be used as arrows, depending on how you orient them. And the trees on the left can be used as a leaf-style design.

In fact, here's a manicure using that last suggestion. Here is how you could use that last design element in a manicure...I started with Julep Jillian, a deep raisin-brown shimmer:

Julep Jillian

Julep Jillian

Next, using China Glaze Passion, I picked up the tops of the leaves. On three of the nails, I stamped on the tips, in a faux-French soft of look. Then, on the accent nail, I added a larger stamp along the cuticle line:

Winter Leaves

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Because I knew I was just going to be using the tips of the leaves, I used the ones mostly under the second mountain, because the pattern doesn't run right up to them--that makes it easier for me to isolate the edge.

I hope this post has helped you explore the possibilities of this plate, and I hope your week is off to a pleasant start. :)

Hugs,
M.