Sugar Skulls & Pet’la Calaveras Plate Review for Dia de los Muertos

We go from dead things (Halloween Zombies) to dead things (for Day of the Dead). Yes I know it was a few days past the occasion, but I like sugar skulls anytime! That and I do have to space out my posts; even if I’ve been wearing these ones for days, but didn’t have the energy to sort and upload regardless. So here they are, Sugar Skulls worn for Dia de los Muertos!

I made some reverse stamping decals using the UberChic Mat. I highly recommend it! It really makes your nailing life sooo much easier. And whilst I thought of a couple of improvements, it was a great investment. For me it beats other forms of decal making options – from ziplock bags to multiple stamper head method, to parchment. I might review it at some point, but there are already tons of people already positively raving about it so…

Oops! Totally forgot to add sparkly crystal jewels to the eye.

The skulls are rad, eh? These are off the lovely Pet’la plate Calaveras. The images are quite long so if you have short nails you won’t get a full skull on your fingertips. I probably shouldn’t have cut down my nails just beforehand, but since I actually have to do things hands-on, I can’t always go round with talons and claws. As you can see it was quite hard to fit enough of the skull on some nails so you can see what it is, so you might just want to be aware of that.

These plates are made from sturdy bronze and the etching I found to be great. The edges are not sharp either, which can be an issue for many plates with no backing, polishing or coating. I used a Color Club black holo and had no problems picking up the fine lines on my Creative Stamper. Wow this post is name-drop central haha.

Though back to the plate, every fine detail transferred flawlessly which is great. There’s nothing worse than a badly etched plate or one that is either too deep or likewise too shallow – especially when the lines that don’t pick up are an integral part of the image’s design. I’ve seen this with some of the cheaper plates, and when stamping plates were becoming ‘a thing’ and not as widespread. Thankfully I haven’t had any issues with any of the Pet’la designs I’ve tried to date – at least using a regular squishy stamper, soft stamper, and the one named above.

Here’s a purdy picture of the Pet’la plate. You can see how full the skull images are in terms of size. So definitely a plate that is suited to a longer nail length where the extra real estate can fit more of the image. It’s probably one of the top Sugar Skull themed plates I’ve come across, even if there aren’t any full standalone skulls or small versions for an accent.

Here’s a glimpse of the Mundo de Uñas Candy Collection that was used to add colour to the skulls as I thought they needed a little something-something.

Image from Mundo de Uñas.