Pueen Sumptuous Gallery Stamping Plates Review

I guess the one good thing about having a nail break and taking time away from swatching is that I finally have no excuse to delay my review of the Pueen stamping plates. I have already shown you a number of manicures with these plates, but today I would like to show you the plates themselves and my thoughts on them. I received a few plates from both this collection and the second one (which I will show you tomorrow). I quickly fell in love with the quality and bough both sets to add to my collection...

This is the first set named Sumptuous Gallery...

The set comes with a small storage case which has an individual pocket for each plate. The case itself is quite nice and sturdy made of a fake leather like material. The pockets swivel out to display a fan of plates allowing for easy plate selection. The pockets themselves are rather thin and I fear they would tear easily. I plan on purchasing the larger Pueen organizer (which is similar to the Bundle Monster organizer that I already own) to store them and using these small cases for travel.

Each plate come with a protective blue cover on the front which needs to be removed prior to stamping. The back of the plates are covered in vinyl which features the Pueen logo as well as their website (http://www.pueencosmetics.com). In addition to providing company info, it acts a smooth out the otherwise sharp metal edges. The plates are high quality and very well made...

This set includes 25 stamping plates with 100 full nail designs and 50 small images. The images that I have tried so far have all stamped exceptionally well. I have not had a problem with any of the designs being stubborn or not transferring. I absolutely love the full size patterns in this set, in particular all the damask patterns that I have been wanting to see for so long. Of course there is plenty of variety including geometric patterns and some unique animal print as well. And how can anyone resist the adorable small images such as the snail on plate 20...

These are scans of my actual plates. Click to zoom in for a full size view...

The full images are a decent size although they do feature the dreaded curve. I refer to it as the dreaded curve because it takes away 2 mm of the image essentially cutting down the stampable (is that a word?) design from 13x17 mm down to 13x15 mm. My nails are often longer than 15 mm, leaving me with just the smaller images to play with. Of course there are plenty of people who have shorter nails and aside from this size shortcoming, these plates are excellent...

The thought is that with the curve in place, any of the images can be used as a french tip design. As far as I'm aware, most people don't like or use the french tip images to begin with. In all the sets that I own, I rarely use the french tip designs and when I do use them, it is out of sheer determination to not let them go to waste. Although I'm extremely happy that this set doesn't have plates full of nothing but french tip designs, cutting into every design to accommodate for the possibility of wanting to use them for a french tip just seems silly to me. I wan my 2 mm back. :)

A few of the manicures with these plates that I have shown you so far...
(click on photo for original post...)

This set of 25 plates can be purchase for $18.99 and is available on both the Pueen website and Amazon.com.

Thanks for looking!
Anutka :)