Review and Tutorial: Watercolor mani with MoYou London Circus 01 & 02

(Press samples ahead, plates purchased by me!)

Hello!


Today we're gonna take a look at MoYou London Circus Collection 01 and 02, the regular and XL version of the same image plates. Here's the video I made reviewing and comparing them:

MoYou London often releases both a regular-sized version and an XL version of their themes. Which you buy generally depends on the size of your nails and what type of mani you want to do:

• If you have longer/wider nails, and if you want to be sure your nail to be completely covered, you probably want the XL plate. 
• If you have shorter nails, or want to be sure an entire image fits on your nail--for example, the clown images below--you might want to get the regular sized plate. 
• The regular-sized plate usually has more images than the XL plate, so be sure the image you want appears on the plate you order.

Here's a closer look:

Circus Collection 01 (Regular version)

Circus Collection 02 (XL version)

In this case (it isn't always the case with MoYou London plates) the scale of the images are the same size, it's just there's more of the image on the XL plate. So for example, the ballerinas are the same size on both plates, there are just more of them in the XL image.


What sort of size difference are we talking about? The XL images (plate 02) are 1.5 x 2.0 cm. The regular images (plate 01) are 1.2 x 1.5 cm. If your brain thinks in inches like mine, here's shots with an inch ruler for each :

 

How do they stamp? I've yet to have a MoYou London image plate I struggle with, even with the clear stampers:

These plates are no exception, and you can see in the side-by-sides the difference in length of the images on the two plates.


The vintage feel of these images inspired me to bust out my sharpie pens and try out the Sharpie watercolor technique with these plates, and I made a tutorial to show you how easy and pretty this technique is:

For the mani I started with a base of Girly Bits Love Yourself First and Irreplaceable (both from her Warrior Goddess collection), and then stamped with Girly Bits Silver Bells and Little Black Dress. Then I colored in using my Sharpie ink, and topcoated:

MoYou London Circus 02 over Girly Bits Love Yourself First and Irreplaceable

MoYou London Circus 02 over Girly Bits Love Yourself First and Irreplaceable

I did a second version with different colors and images (same base polish and stamping polishes):

MoYou London Circus 02 over Girly Bits Irreplaceable

The first version has a more tone-on-tone feel, where the second shows you more of a the range of colors you can play with, especially on the ring-finger acrobat. Which do you like better?


You can find these plates in MoYou London's store.


Happy stamping and coloring!
M.