Chez Delaney XL Plates

Good morning, Dear Reader!

I was doing a bit of poking around yesterday, and I discovered that Chez Delaney has a new series of six stamping plates, the XL Series. They're six giant plates, four of those plates being all French tip patterns (42 patterns per plate), and they were love at first sight for me.  I borrowed pictures of them with permission from Chez Delaney, and I think the pictures speak for themselves quite well, so I'll show those to you now.  Click on a picture and a full sized version will open in a new tab so you can actually see the patterns.

Chez Delaney XL Series Plates, Plate A

Chez Delaney XL Series Plates, Plate B

Chez Delaney XL Series Plates, Plate C

Chez Delaney XL Series Plates, Plate D

Chez Delaney XL Series Plates, Plate E

Chez Delaney XL Series Plates, Plate F

I just noticed something funny this second!  It's good to see that the lower right of Plate F offers us more options in 420 manicures!  I'd been feeling so restricted by having only the one blurry pot leaf on a BM plate, but now we have choices.

Back to our story... I saw these, then the sky cracked open, a ray of sunlight shone brightly down upon me, and a choir of angels began to sing.  Well, that's what I'm saying now.  The reality is that I cracked like cheap wicker under a fat man on plates A and B, as well as the other new addition at Chez Delaney to accompany the XL plates, an XL sized stamper for the images.

The reason I was so thrilled to see all of this is that, as you might have guessed, I love French tip patterns, especially the ones that completely cover the tips of my nails.  Normally, there's not more than one tip pattern to a plate (which is all that fits), and I chose the C-D (my new abbreviation for Chez-Delaney, which I'm officially tired of typing) plates that I have already just for the tip patterns on them, which makes the price per pattern used a little harder to swallow.  Also, there just are not terribly many tip patterns available (the Bundlemonster ones are a little small for me, so I just have Konad and C-D), so to be presented with 168 new ones unexpectedly was pretty impressive!  

I selected the two plates I did because I really like every single one of the patterns on both, and I'm pleased that there's an upsized stamper because that was my one and only criticism of the large tip patterns, that they exceeded the size of regular stampers.  I do like most of the patterns on the other four plates, but it's uncommon for me to like every pattern on a normal plate of 5-7 patterns, so for A and B, with 42 patterns each to be 100% appealing, that's dang impressive.

I also wanted to give you an update on my Essie Ruby Slippers manicure.  It seems that I might be onto something with this Konad top coat under quick dry - on the third day of wearing this, I have zero chips or tip wear even though I've been tough on it.  I'm thinking I'll wear it as long as I can, until either there's wear or I'm too bored with it to leave it (in which case the test would be the After picture), to see how long it can last.  Speaking of Ruby Slippers, if you haven't already entered to win a bottle of it, please do.

That's it for today, Dear Reader.  Until next time, love and nail polish to you!