Review: Tristaenia seasons plates from Messy Mansion

(Press sample)

Hello!

Are you enjoying the end of winter? Are you ready for just about any other season? If so, here are a few plates from Messy Mansion that'll help you pretend until they get here!

I did a video review to discuss how to get your most out of this style of collage plate:

Let's take a look at the plates, starting with the autumn plate:

Tristaenia Autumn

Lots of fall-themed images from pumpkins to leaves to umbrellas, along with some textural sections in between.

In the video I show you how to use a template to help you pick out which section of the plate you want to use; I have a piece of paper with a hole the size and shape of my nail cut out of it, and I just move it around the plate until I see something that strikes my fancy. This'll help you see which parts will fit and will keep the plate from being too overwhelming.


Next is the Merry Christmas plate, which I'm putting in the place of 'Winter':

Tristaenia Merry Christmas

There are some specifically Christmas-related images on this plate, but most will work for general winter themes just as well--snowflakes and trees and candy. If you're looking for a little whimsy to fun-up your winter manicures, this is the plate for you.


Next we have Spring, filled with flowers and flourishes and eggs and leaves:

Tristaenia Spring

And, finally, the Summer plate is swimming (hahaha) with fishes and waves and seashells:

Tristaenia Summer

One strength of the Tristaenia line is the reverse-negative sides; one half uses your stamping polish for the design itself, and the other half uses your stamping polish as your background. This makes it easy to mix things up with the same image; you can see an example of that on my manicure here.


So how big are the images? It's a little hard to say, because everything varies, so here's a look at the relative sizes:

So how do they stamp? Pay no attention to the stray black marks on the right--that was my error. And I had a little bit of imperfection on the side of the wave image, but that was my error--to prove it, I'll show you this image in my manicure below.

For the manicure, I started with Spellbound Nails Hare-Brained, a fun, soft blue-speckled crelly:

Spellbound Nails Hare-Brained

Then I stamped with Barry M Cotton:

Summer Lovin' with Tristaenia Summer and Spellbound Nails Hare-Brained

Summer Lovin' with Tristaenia Summer and Spellbound Nails Hare-Brained

I love how easy it is to do manis like this with the new crystal stampers (click here to see my review)--you can put everything right where you want it, and I wanted the bottom of each wave to rest right at the tip of my nail. Love it. :)

You can find these plates and the crystal stamper in the Messy Mansion store, and don't forget to follow them on Facebook for updates.

Happy stamping!

M.