LojaBBF Nail Art Stamping Plates Review

Hola stamping fanatics,

If you recall I posted a new indie brand I discovered a while ago called Loja BBF and showed you Cris's many many awesome plates here.  Well after stalking, ordering, and waiting the plates have finally arrived fresh from Brazil to my throbbing eager heart!  And now I'm going to share all of their awesomeness with you.  As usual when I discover a new brand that I've never used before I have to test out all the plates for quality assurance.  I do this because of course I want make sure my money has been well spent, but also so that you can decide for yourselves if the quality is up to snuff.  So let's get started.

The Plates

Again these plates are from Brazil and are of the indie brand variety.  There are currently 20 plates, but I have it on good authority from Cris that more are coming down the pipelines soon.  Each plate comes in a beautiful external paper sleeve (think MoYou London style but non-laminated) with the Loja BBF logo featured up front.  Some are specialized for the theme of the plate i.e. Santa hat on the Christmas themed plate.  The plates do not come with a blue or clear film over it.  Repeat there is NO FILM over these plates i.e. they are ready to use.  They also do not feature a backing which these days I actually like for ease of clean up. 

 
Dimensions 

The plates themselves measure  6.0 x 9.0 cm tall by wide and feature roughly 8 full sized images per plate. The exceptions are some of the infinity style image plates.

Image Size + Comparisons

The the full size nail images are around  2.0 x 1.6 cm.  Once again I'll give you an idea of size using the measurements of several other plates in my inventory, but as you can see these are on the larger side of things so long nail girls breath easy.

MoYou London Plate Pro 08 (non-XL) - 1.5 x 1.3 cm
MoYou London Plates  Explorer 10 (XL) - 2.2 x 1.6 cm
Bunny Nails HD B - 2.5 x 2 cm
MJ Plate VIII - 2.2 x 1.7cm
Fab Ur Nails Fun 2 - 2.2 x 1.7 cm
Vivid Lacquer 007 - 2.0 x 2.0 cm
Cheeky Jumbo 2013 - 2.0 x 1.5 cm
Bundle Monster CYO - 1.7 x 1.9 cm

The Images 

Per usual when quality checking I always stamp with Wet N' Wild Black Creme unless there is an issue with pickup in which case I switch to my gold standard Konad Special Polish in Black or a recent newly discovered gold standard Mundo de Unas stamping polishes.   I also use my gold standard stamper the XL squishy/sticky stamper.  

One final quick note:  anywhere you see that I wrote 20 second pause is because an image was etched a little too deep for an immediate transfer from the plate to the stamper to get a crisp image.  So in this instance after I scraped the image I would "pause" for 20 seconds, allowing the image to dry a little in the wells and then pick it up with my stamper.  You'll note the images became cleaner and the details and elements of the designs were a little clearer when I took this approach.  Yes - I have tricks for days when it comes to stamping ;) 

The Cons:

Because I like fairy tales I'll start with the bad so that the ending is happy.  I will admit plate 1 was an instant disappointment which I knew it would be before I even started stamping.  You might ask why and the answer is plain.  After stamping for so many years across so many brands I've reached the point where I can touch a plate and tell you if it's etched too deeply or much too shallowly to provide a good pick up.  The minute my thumb ran over the first plate I knew I was going to have trouble.  I tried compensating by using my green square rubberized stamper from Vivid Lacquer (which is better for decal making and has less absorbancy) rather than my XL squishy/sticky one praying this would offset the etching.  I also tried not pressing as deeply into the image which is why I was able to get a clean Marilyn Monroe stamp and I also tried scraping over the images multiple times so that less polish was in the wells to pick up and smear outward obliterating the fine details of the images.  I also tried letting the images dry in the wells slightly before picking them up as explained above.  None of these tricks worked unfortunately.

To make matters worse the etching was so deep that when attempting to clean it with a cotton ball and acetone, as I do with all of my plates, the cotton balls got ripped apart and stuck into the wells.  I had to pick the cotton out with an orange stick in order to try restamping the image!  Sigh.  Ok so out of 18 plates I have 3 with stamping issues and all of them were related to the etching being either far to deep or in one case too shallow and too deep (plate 17 - waves only).  Not bad, but not great either considering if you are paying international shipping.  I'm hoping Cris will send me replacements inside a regular letter envelope which will cut down on costs as it would be unfair to her otherwise.  I'll keep you updated about the results.

The Pros

As you can see I got 18 plates out of 20 (2 are still being shipped to me). Why? Because I must always buy in bulk and I hate parsing out international collections.  It drives me mad and I like my collections to be as updated as possible - yeah I know that's all kinds of trouble.  In any event - these are terribly unique.  I am so so impressed, and ladies reading along these days know that I haven't been that impressed lately with some of the more popular brands of plates in terms of innovation.  Do. Not. Bore. Me.  I will leave you and never come back.  Lol!  I think Cris has an excellent grasp on this concept because as I stamped out each plate the next became better than the last in terms of innovation.

Look at the lace plate and behold my awe and gratitude.  I love lace especially when it's this well executed!  The fine detailing here is astounding! The size of these images is also excellent.  I think these will suit a lot of ladies in that "in between" length of nails while also catering to us long nailed gals. And who here amongst us doesn't love Alice in Wonderland or ocean inspired imagery?  She even took on the monumental task of creating The Hunger Games themed imagery and rose to to the challenge beautifully.  It's because these plates are so unique and beautiful that issue with etchings aside I think they were worth owning!

Bonus Materials

Loja BBF also is an indie polish maker! I think that's what we call a double threat ladies and gents.   I'll show you the 4 I purchased when I got my plates, but there are many more that are beautiful so much so I had a hard time deciding which to buy.  I have my eye on the pastel polishes she has, but I had to exhibit some self control.

Final Thoughts

So I love these plates, but then you knew that from before when I first discovered them!  However I'm a bit disappointed that a few of my plates had etching issues which kept me from giving this brand a perfect review.  The quality of the plates that did stamp was excellent though, and for a change I didn't require digging though my bag of stamping tricks to figure out how to get the best image transfer because it was effortless.  Yes the etching is an issue, but I have already brought this to the attention of Cris and this issue should be relatively easy to resolve.  As I wrote earlier I still think these plates are worth owning as I don't have any like them in my stamping plate family, and it is highly likely that you don't either.

Loja BBF plates retail for $7.50 USD plus shipping $10 USD to the states.  If you are international you would have to email Cris for specifics.  You can find LojaBBF here or on Facebook.  I will keep you updated about the replacement of the flawed plates when I have news, but for now please stay tuned for some nail art and thanks so much for reading!  I'll see you next post...