HUGE Moyou London Christmas Haul (pic heavy)

Hello Readers!

Today I am bringing you a post that is *not* nail art for a change, because I kinda feel like talking about what I got for Christmas. Now, my husband and I have a kind of agreement when it comes to birthdays/Christmas. Both of us tend to have specific interests and it doesn't work well for us to try to buy things for each other based on those very specific interests, so we each get a budget and we buy our own Christmas and birthday presents. Everybody's happy!

So, anyway, to get right into it, here's what I bought-and wrapped- and put under the tree for myself to open. Ha ha it may seem that it's not much of a surprise that way, but I actually was surprised by a few of the things I had bought myself a month or so before Christmas. I had forgotten about a couple of them!

Let's start things off with a couple of plates from the "Alice in Wonderland" collection. I am a lover of all things Alice, so I already own a couple of plates from this collection  (see here and here,) but I decided to pick up a couple more. I don't own any of MoYou London's typography type plates, so I thought it would be fun to try one of them out. Text often comes in handy and the phrases on this plate are really fun.

I also picked up this brand new Alice in Wonderland plate, because I thought that it was absolutely gorgeous. They are based off of the classic Alice in Wonderland illustrations by John Tenniel. Most of them are basically exact copies of those original pictures. I just love them!

(I'm adding a break in here because this post is long- click through if you want to see more)

This one I thought would come in handy often for making paint-splatter backgrounds or just going for a straight paint-splatter look. I think the drippy border on the top will come in handy a lot too, and it will be nice to have a high-quality version of that image. I like that there are different varieties for different themes.

These next two I have already used once. I adore the beautiful vintage style of these images. The star image on the top row, second to last is a very versatile image, and I think the image just below it of the violins will be super fun to play with for music themes. And that vintage hot air balloon! These images also remind me of classic illustrations.

And this plate... I am so in love with this plate. The carousel images are so *cute* and the frames are so useful, and it even has some lovely un-themey filigree thrown in there. It's hard to see it, but those middle full nail images are tiny carousels, tiny carousel horses, and then tiny carousels again.

Now this plate is a lot bit quirky. I'm not a vegan, and this has a *lot* of vegan themed images, but I bought it for all the food images. I love those onions. And the wheat is so lovely. And also the artichoke- so. cute. My original idea for this plate was to pair it with a pizza image and use the mushrooms, tomatoes, and onions to go along with it. Now that I'm thinking about it it would also be fun to do a Shrek-themed mani with those onions. 

Of course, I had to try out some of the beautiful enchanted collection. I am planning on using this winter-themed plate pretty soon before it starts to get warmer again. I think my favorite image on this plate might be the narwhal. The beautiful pine needles in the lower right would also be great for Christmas- really pretty much all of these are great for Christmas-y themes, but since Christmas is over now I'll have to use them for winter. Lucky we still have a couple of months of that left! 

So I kind of wanted to buy all the plates in the enchanted collection but I reigned myself in, because I like to have a variety of styles and all these plates have a similar style. So I bought just one more enchanted plate, the tropical plate. Mostly for the sloth, because he is adorable, as well as the angelfish. Love those! The flamingo is super cute, but I kind of feel like I am drowning just a little bit in flamingo images. Haha MoYou London really seems to love to produce flamingos! 

 I also already used this plate for some Christmas nail art. This plate would make some really lovely pottery-inspired nail art, and it also has a lot of images that can be used pretty generically for more elegant looks.

I bought this plate because it just looks so darn useful. For french tips, and also half moons, or just for creating striped manis like I did here, I think this plate is going to join Holy Shapes 05 and Holy Shapes 19 as one of my go-tos for backgrounds. 

Now even I was kind of surprised when I got to this plate! I thought I had decided not to buy this plate, because  I bought this emoji plate from Born Pretty store a while ago. Guess I decided I needed them both! But in seriousness, I do think the images on this plate are better quality as you are able to fill more of them in. They are also about 50% smaller than the Born Pretty emoji images. 

This plate purchase was not based on practicality. Mostly I fell in love with the adorable fox hat and though I wasn't sure that image would translate into nail art, I really wanted it. I also really like the little pantone color swatch in the middle on the right-hand side. I can't wait for pantone to announce the 2017 color of the year because when they do, that image is going on my nails! Ha ha I also really love the vintage camera because it reminds me of my late Grandfather who was a photographer. I inherited some of his old vintage cameras and they are so beautiful to me. 

I really love this plate. I love all the triangle images. I adore the speech bubbles- and if you look closely you can see that there is a solid speech bubble and an outlined speech bubble, which are the same size so you could totally overlap those with a clear stamper. The little cameras are also lovely, as well as the hands forming a heart, which I think I will have to utilize for Valentine's Day. And the pizza! Yesssss! A couple of the images- the two lower ones on the right side- have me scratching my head though. Triangles with mustaches and triangles with antlers. I mean it's funny but maybe a little too quirky. 

Another practical plate, but I am excited about it. Somehow I never seem to have just the right polka dot or striped images. I know those are fairly easy to paint freehand, but I just have affinity for stamping these things because it is so much faster and it turns out more uniform. 

Paper airplanes. Kites. Paper boats and pinwheels. The sweet innocence of this plate. I can see this for a lot of fun summer manis, and the paper cranes would be fun for a Chinese New Year theme. 

 ...aaand there's this plate. This will be really interesting and kind of challenging to work with, I feel. I'm kind of feeling a bit unsure about it now to be honest. But we shall see. 

 This adorable plate from the suki collection, however, is going to be fun for a lot of different themes. Food manis, the carrot for Easter to be paired with the rabbit images perhaps, the letter and hearts for a fun valentines day mani. There's a pumpkin for Halloween, and a lot of other fun food images. I think the little sushi (top row, second from left) is just too cute. Oh, and the tiny speech bubble with the heart inside! That would be so cute paired with so many different images. 

So MoYou has been slowly releasing these "limited edition" Trend Hunter plates. I bought the first plate and have had a lot of fun with it (see here and there and just one more). So I figured, this is an awesome plate, let's go ahead and get that one too. I especially love the circle images on the left hand side of the plate, but I have a feeling I'm going to just love playing with this one in general. 

I'm a big fan of tropical themes for nail art, so I decided to get a couple of the beautiful plates from the tropical line. I mostly fell in love with the toucan images in the upper-left hand corner of this plate. I just love how the beaks overlap to form a line down the center of the image; it makes me happy. Some of the feather images on this plate are also very interesting, and the one with the peacock silhouettes (top row, second image from left) is really neat, too. 

I also love this plate for the intricate, detailed flower images. I think my favorite is on the bottom row, second from left. The little palm trees with the bands of design going over them! Aaaaahhh it's so perfect! I am also loving the image on the middle row, second from the right- the hibiscus with a thatched pattern surrounding it, stripes of design on the top and the bottom. 

Finally, I have this plate from the typography collection featuring the vintage typewriter. I find that fonts come in handy quite often (for things like this and that and the other), so I felt like something a little bit different would be a good investment. This is a bit of a smaller font than what I have, so if I feel the need to put more than just a couple of letters on my nails I'll have the ability to do that.

Well, if you're still with me, I'm impressed. Which plate is your favorite? Did you also get some fun nail goodies for Christmas? Let me know in the comments!