Review & How-To: MoYou London Greek Mythology Collection 01

(Press Sample)

Hello!

Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes, I'm back with one of my favorite MoYou London plates yet. Today I will be showing you plate 01, from the new Greek Mythology Collection that recently released. There are 9 plates in the collection, and I think it's only a matter of time before I own them all, because they all get my creative juices flowing! But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, here's the video, where I show the images and discuss some ideas for using the plate:

Next up, here are the still images of the plate:

MoYou London Greek Mythology Collection 01

MoYou London Greek Mythology Collection 01: Right Side

MoYou London Greek Mythology Collection 01: Left side

And, of course, the de rigeur comparison with a standard Konad plate, so you can get a feel for how big the different images are on the plates:

MoYou London Greek Mythology Collection 01 vs. standard Konad plate

MoYou London Greek Mythology Collection 01 vs. standard Konad plate

MoYou London also sent me one of their stamper/scraper sets to try out; they have several to choose from, and the one they sent me is a cute pink one:

I used the stamper to test out the plate and do the manicure you'll see below. You might remember me mentioning before that I normally use the typical Konad stamper/scraper set, with the metal scraper; I've been using it for a long time and am used to it (you know how that is, lol), so I was interested to see how this performed in comparison.

You might also remember me mentioning that plastic scrapers can sometimes be easier to use on these collage-style plates, because the plastic doesn't catch so much on all of the surrounding engraving the way the metal scrapers do. That was definitely true here; I found this plastic scraper very effective for use with the plate; it did the job without catching on the engraving at all.

The stamper is made with a glossier plastic than the one I normally use, and I found that this had two consequences. First, this stamper made isolating part of the plate easier, because the polish doesn't dry so quickly on the surface; this gives you a little extra time to scrape off the parts of the image that you don't want to transfer over to your nail. Since so many of the interesting things you can do with these plates involve that technique, I think this it's worth the investment to grab one of these (it's currently priced at 3.99 GBP on the MoYou London website). The second consequence is that because the polish takes longer to dry on the surface, it's easier to smudge the image when  you transfer on your nail--so use a light hand when you first try it out. Otherwise, I didn't find it any more difficult to use than the one I'm used to, and I will be using this one from now on when I want to isolate part of a plate or image. :)

On to the 'How-To' portion of the post! So, what can you do with this plate?

1) Full-nail designs. This plate has several areas that can easily be used for full-nail images, and a few more than can be used if you have smaller nails and/or you're careful. For example, the leafy area might not cover your nails completely if you have wider nails, but you could very easily have the design come over three-quarters of your nail, leaving a little blank space on one edge.

Areas that can be used for full-nail designs

2) Beautiful face manicures. The theme of this plate is the nine muses of Greek mythology, which are traditionally pictured as women. The faces on this plate called to me immediately, and I had to have them. Take a closer look at the faces you have to choose from; I've circled them, but notice you can pull the faces with the elements around them as well:

Lots of lovely faces!

An added benefit for me is that two of these faces remind me of Wonder Woman, and with the stars and columns in the middle, I will definitely be making myself a Wonder Woman manicure with this. :)

4) Instrument/musician manicures. There are enough musical instruments in this plate to make an elegant manicure using parts of them, along with the musical notes on the side. I love that these aren't the typical instruments that you normally get on other plates, and they have a more classical feel to them:

Get your tunes on, baby!

3) Think-outside-of-the-box-icures. Every time I review one of these collage plates, I remind you to think outside of the box. One way I want to encourage you to do this is to look for less-obvious areas that you can use as full nail images, or cool background images that you use under other images. Here are a few areas I think are really visually interesting. Notice how if you just look at the areas in the circles, they look really different out of the larger context; toga robes and hair look like cool deco swirls or marbling:

Nobody keeps baby in a box

If you're having a hard time picturing what an area would look like just by itself, you can cut out a hole in a piece of paper and pass it over the plate to see what shows through (like the Chit Chat Nails technique), or just use your stamper to pick up areas you think look interesting, and see how it comes out on your stamper, or stamped on a piece of paper. :)

4) Isolate those cool images! There are a fun group of images that can be used completely alone or in a melange-collage manicure. What do I mean by that melange-collage thing? Do you remember when you were in school and you'd cut cool things out of magazines and paste them together to make pretty collages? You can do that with your manicures, too. Pick a few images you like, stamp them randomly on your nails in the same or different colors. Do this over a full-nail image, a saran-wrap textured background, a 'splodge' manicure (Crumpet FTW!), or just over your base polish. Take a look at some of the images you have to choose from here:

You could take the globe and just use it by itself as an accent nail. Or, you could take the coins, pick a couple of different sizes, and stamp them randomly over a glitter background. You could also use all the words and Greek letters on the plate randomly over your base polish in a neutral color, and then stamp another image over them on your accent nails. The possibilities are endless.

5) Build a scene. Take a couple of elements that you think complement each other, and use them together to build a scene across your nails. This is the technique that I used for the manicure below. My favorite part of this plate is the writing muse (the one with the scroll, whose face blends into that beautiful flower-medallion design), and I wanted to do something that focused on her face, and built a design around it.

I started with Shirley Ann Nail Lacquers Midnight Masquerade, an ethereal bluish-lavender that has a very subtle blue-purple shift and leans more purple in some lights, and more blue in some lights:

Shirley Ann Nail Lacquers Midnight Masquerade

Shirley Ann Nail Lacquers Midnight Masquerade

Shirley Ann Nail Lacquers Midnight Masquerade

Then I stamped over it using Sally Hansen Co-bolt Blue and Grape Going. I accented with a dotting tool and Sally Hansen Freeze!, Pronto Purple, Coco A-Go-Go, and Milani HD:

I love the way this sort of manicure looks when the nails are not all lined up as much as when they are, so I had to include a picture of that; each nail is different and pretty in its own right:

So there you have it, my ideas for how to use this gorgeous plate. As always, I'm sure you can come up with a million more, but I hope this gives you a little jump-start!

Hugs and loves,
M.