I love using stamping plates for nail designs… but there’s a lot of brands out there to choose from. When I’m on the market for a new plate my main question is how big are their designs? It’s hard to locate sizing information online since most product descriptions do not include dimensions. So I’ve put together a nice little comparison of four top brands: Konad, Cheeky, Bundle Monster and Mash!
My nails are relatively long so I’m always looking for plates with long designs. Some of you may have wide nails and the width of each stamp may be important to you. So I’ve included the dimensions (in millimeters) on each photo below. All dimensions are listed as width times length (W x L). Keep in mind that brands may change their plates over time so I’ve included the specific plate names/model numbers for your reference. Let’s get to the comparison!
KONAD↑ To my surprise, Konad has the smallest designs of all four plates- both in width and length! These stamps generally cover most of my other nails if I position them carefully, but you can see it doesn’t cover much of my thumb! Something else I noticed about Konad is that their sizing may not be consistent. Although most of them are sized like the one in my photo, one my other plates has a full-nail design that’s even shorter than this one. Konad was the first brand of stamping products I used when I first started getting into nail art, but now that I line them up and compare- Konad doesn’t really impress me!
CHEEKY ↑ Cheeky plates have big designs! Something to note is that they are shaped with a curve on one end for french manicures or halfmoons. If you use it for a halfmoon then you’d be able to take advantage of more of its length, which is 20mm. That’s really long! But if you want to use it as a full-nail stamp then you’d only have 17mm of length to work with. But still, that’s really good! (The photo above was used as a full-nail stamp and it almost covered the length of my thumb.) I also want to note that Cheeky plates have wider designs than the other three brands. I heard they make jumbo-sized plates too, but I don’t own any of them.
BUNDLE MONSTER ↑ Bundle Monster designs are relatively big. They’re larger than Konad but a tad smaller than Cheeky. I have however seen BM plates that have smaller designs than this one. So this brand may not be consistent with sizing either. Also, I think that perhaps the BM plates aren’t etched very deeply? Because the stamp in this photo came out kind of faint. I dunno- they’re not my fave.
MASH ↑ Mash plates are relatively small. They’re only one step up from Konad. This was my first time using a Mash plate and it works ok, not much to say here really!
MY PICK: My top pick is Cheeky! I do have a bit more cleanup when I use Cheeky plates since their designs are wide, but I like their length. And it’s cool that they give you the flexibility for frenchies or halfmoons! I haven’t tried them that way yet since I’m afraid they’ll come out crooked, but it’s nice to have that option! Also, the whole metal plate itself is larger than the other three brands. You can see in my first photo that the Cheeky plate looks giant next to the other ones! This Cheeky plate was part of a summer 2012 collection, but I hope all of their plates are this big. When it comes to stamping, bigger is always better, don’t you think?
So what do you think of this comparison and was it helpful for you? What’s your experience with stamping?
Craftynail 