Bundle Monster Sloteazzy Watermarble Plate with OPI Christmas Gone Plaid & Pretty Serious Hack the Halls

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Watermarbles are super pretty, super trendy, and a stupendous pain in the ass - I'm just way too lazy to spend 10 minutes per nail.  I'm apparently not the only one, as tutorials on how to cheat them using silicone mats or nail vinyls or dragging a needle across your nail surface abound everywhere.  Since I'm not alone in avoiding watermarbles, Bundle Monster released a stamping plate in 2015 that was a blogger collaboration with marbling pro Sloteazzy that's been sold out several times now.

indirect daylight
Short review: it's amazing.  Good, clear etching, and plenty of design space no matter how long your nails.

To start off with, I used OPI's Christmas Gone Plaid, a deep dark evergreen crème that's aaaalmost a one-coater (2 here) and shiny before topcoat.  The formula is very nice and stays where you put it; this pic has very minimal cleanup involved.  Watch out, as per usual for blues/greens this heavily pigmented, it'll stain the crap out of your cuticles, so paint carefully, or scrub the tenacious staining off in the shower.

indoor, CF lighting
I was inspired by one of the product shots for the stamping plate, where they'd used a tonal goldenrod with orange color scheme, and went green with it instead, using Pretty Serious Hack the Halls.

indirect daylight
I've also been using a very inexpensive clear jelly stamper from Amazon lately, and am utterly in love.  Being able to see where you're aiming to place patterns is game-changing, AND this stamper really picks up well with no priming (good thing, since priming messes up the whole point of optical clarity through these things).  When I positioned a little off and didn't transfer the whole stamp, it's cool, look through the barrel and just re-stamp.  In the finished design, you can see a little disruption in my middle finger, but i didn't have to redo anything at all.


Where to buy:  this sweet plate is available when in stock from the Bundle Monster store for a very reasonable $5.

~Michelle

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