Mentality Cantankerous ............. stamped with MoYou Explorer Collection no 5 plate

Mentality Cantankerous stamped with MoYou Explorer #5

I've made two fab new discoveries in 2014 already.......... Mentality polishes and MoYou stamping plates. I've been pondering and procrastinating over both for a few months now, but I bit the bullet at last and placed an ordered a few Mentality colours and a couple of MoYou plates.

I loved Nailventurous Floam and its relatives (although I've not worn any of these for ages - the only one I've used since I started this blog is Humblebee and that is ages ago!), so I was immediately drawn to the Mentality microglitters. This one is Cantankerous - a mix of black, white, yellow and red in a clear base. This shot is in the bottle:

Mentality Cantankerous

And on my nails:

Mentality Cantankerous

I just used two thin coats of Mentality Cantankerous straight over basecoat; I wanted to see how easy it was to get full coverage without undies. Although you can see my nails through the glitter in these big photos, in real life this looks full coverage.

Mentality Cantankerous

I needed several coats of basecoat to get this smooth enough, although I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to getting a smooth finish on my nails. But totally worth the effort - I love this polish and wore it on its own for a couple of days before I added the stamping!

Mentality Cantankerous

Mentality Cantankerous

I stamped this with MoYou Explorer Collection plate #5, using the banner print from the top of the plate. The all-picture nature of these plates makes them great for longer nails, when most of the 'older style' plates need double stamping or some other fudge to make the pattern fill the nail. I think they're also great fun and very versatile too - as you can use more than image on a single nail or pick different parts of the image to use on different nails o make a co-ordinated skittle mani (I did than with this plate in this mani here the other day).

Mentality Cantankerous stamped with MoYou Explorer #5

The MoYou plate was great to use, every image stamped just about perfect first time. I used American Apparel Hassid for the stamping since I couldn't find my Konad black polish - Hassid stamps just as well as Konad and is a lot easier to clean up. Maybe I'll be using this as my go-to stamping black in future!

I'm super impressed by the MoYou plates and I've already placed my second order! No doubt I'll be ordering more Mentality polishes soon, but I will wait until I've tried the two I still have waiting on my desk! I wore Mentality Brute last week - I loved that colour too; hard to say whether I like Brute or Cantankerous best so far!

Mentality are based in the US and have their own store and ship internationally (larger orders).  I purchased my Mentality polishes from Sally Magpies - Sally has a great range of indie and overseas polishes made easy to buy in the UK. I purchased my MoYou plates from MoYou London.