Review: Tristaenia Love, Houses, and Baby plates from Messy Mansion

(Press sample)

Hello!

We all know it's Valentine season, love is in the air and on our minds, and I've got a set of whimsical, light-hearted plates to help you celebrate it all, by a line I've just been introduced to: Tristaenia via Messy Mansion. Many of these plates have names rather than numbers, so for my first review, I grouped together three plates that I think fit the Valentine theme: Love, Houses, and Baby.

'Cause you know--first comes love, then comes marriage (and often a house together), then comes the baby in the baby carriage!

*Ahem*. Okay, I feel better now.

You know I made a video to show them to you:


And let's take a look at some still shots, starting with Love:

Tristaenia Love

This one has a flurry of hearts, flowers, heart flowers, lace, and dot patterns: Everything you need to create a fun, happy Valentine's manicure.

Then Houses:

Tristaenia Houses

This one has architectural elements like windows, paths, fences, signs, and textile patterns: what I love about this one is all the textural elements you have to play with in admit the house images.

And finally, Baby:

Tristaenia Baby

This plate has everything you need to celebrate your little ones: totes adorbs faces, toys, prams, and frills. You're all set for baby showers, kid's birthdays, or any other bouncing baby business.

I have a couple of general notes about these plates, stylistically. I love that the plates have positive and negative sides of the same image, so that you can choose whether your stamping polish outlines the images, or you base polish does--that alone gives you a ton of options for easy, attractive manicures.

Also, I think plates like this can be overwhelming when you first look at them--there's a lot going on, and it can be hard to pull out ideas about how to use what for a mani. In these cases I recommend using a template to plan your mani--and by template I mean a piece of paper with a hole cut out of it in the shape of your nail. Take a look at my video review to see what I mean--this will really unlock the potential of the plates for you.

Let's talk size! Here are a couple of shots with a ruler to help you get a feel for how big the designs are:

And how do they stamp? I had pretty darn good results:

You know I had to do a Valentine's mani with one of these plates--I decided to go the most lovey-dovey route and used the Love plate.

I started with a base of Spellbound Nails Howler over Zoya Eden:

Spellbound Nails Howler over Zoya Eden

Then I stamped with Barry M Cotton; to show what I meant about the negative/positive sides of the plate, I played with that in the mani:

Sweet Valentine

Sweet Valentine

I used my Messy Mansion clear stamper (seem my review here) to line up the image right at the edge of my nail--look at the index, middle and pinkie, where I put the thin line right on the tip of the nail. I did mess the one on the middle finger up a little, but I could have easily swiped off that one bit and put it on again with the clear stamper. This is my first attempt trying to do something like a French manicure with a clear stamper and I LOVE how easy it was.

I love how this mani came out! It's lighthearted and fun, and that's coming from a person who doesn't normally do either pink or the traditional Valentine's style mani.

You can find these plates and the clear stamper on Messy Mansion's website, and you can follow them for updates on sales, giveaways, etc., on their Facebook page.

Happy stamping!
M.

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