Nail Polish Lexicon ~ Indie and Messy Mansion Product Review

I just got my first order of Messy Mansion plates. They are my first "indie" plates, plates designed and sold by an independent manufacturer. Commercial plates like Bundle Monster and MoYou are awesome, but ever once in a while I like to support those people that go at it alone. It is like the difference between a grocery store and a farmer's market. Indie plate makers are having a hard time of it lately. Some commercial makers have been trying to copyright the act of nail stamping and are attacking indie makers with lawsuits and cease and desist orders. You won't see me buying plates from people who do that anytime soon. And there there is the opposite side of the scale, the cut rate dealers. I don't mind super cheap plates of suspicious quality, but when they steal the designs from other makers it becomes not cool. So independent plate makers have the big commercial companies trying to force them out of business, and cheap companies stealing their designs.

Anyway, here is my first indie purchase. The 3 plates come in resealable baggies with a holographic sticker on the bag sporting Messy Mansion's logo "MM". I bought MM04 the Irish plate, MM25 the Science plate, and MM28 Crime.

The logo sticker really caught the light in this photo :)

Well first lets take a look at the size of the plates. They come with the standard blue film to protect from scratches. And they are larger than many of the plates I've gotten in the past. Here I compare it to BundleMonster's BM221. BundleMonster is a standard sized plates. Most plates you buy come in this size.

The area within the full nail image is also larger than BundleMonster's.

Much longer and a tad bit wider than BundleMonster. The size for full nail images do vary quite a bit. I'm just using BundleMonster because it is a very common plate company. And the plate happened to be sitting on my desk when my MM shipment came in.

And on to the stamping. The images are etched evenly and deeply. I think they are deeper than any plate I've gotten before. The edges are crisp and clean. I am in love! I've ordered 5 more plates and can't wait till they come in!

I am totally in love. By the way, what do you think of my new camera. I'm still working on the best way to use it, but I think the results are stunning. The shape of the photo is different and I'm trying to come up with a way to fix that without having to crop each and every photo, but other than that, I am super pleased.