Red Leopard Print

I'm away this weekend in Aberdeen visiting a friend, so I'm trying out this scheduled post business.  We'll see how it goes...

A little while ago I purchased the OPI Muppets Mini Collection.  My entire reasoning being that I needed to own Warm and Fozzie, because I have a Fozzie teddy that I've had since I was a baby.  Very logical, I think you'll find.  So, since I wasn't particularly attracted by the colour of Warm and Fozzie (just the name) I decided to get the mini set, so that I'd have a few colours to try out.  So in celebration of owning my first ever brown polish, I decided to do a proper leopard-coloured leopard print design.  I was feeling red, so this is what I ended up with.

I used two coats of Barry M Red (still a bit on VNL in this photo, but you couldn't see it in person).  On the accent nail I used Barry M Instant Nail Effects Gold Foil and Red Glitter, with OPI Warm and Fozzie for the spots, and the black is a nail art pen from ebay.  This photo was taken before I added my topcoat, for fear of dragging!

I was really pleased with how this design turned out.  So much so that I repeated it with blue and zebra print...  What do you think?

Accessorize Swatches

Today I have a few swatches for you.  I picked up these Accessorize polishes in Superdrug - they're reduced at the moment, so they were only £2.45 each.  What a bargain!

First up is Pink Spice.  This is two coats, with no topcoat.

This is a pink-orange duochrome foil, and it is loovely.  I put it on in the evening, but the lighting was rubbish and I couldn't take any photos until the morning, so I just spent all night looking at it changing from pink to orange to pink to orange.....Possibly I'd had a little too much wine, but it is very pretty!

In the picture below you can see more clearly the orange colour.

And this last photo shows both colours very nicely!  Please ignore by poor index fingernail with its broken corner...

Next up is Aztec.  Again, this one it a foil, and it's a multichrome, flashing green, purple and a coppery-gold.  This went on a little patchy, so I used three coats for these swatches.  It could probably have done with four, to be honest, as there was still a bit of patchiness.

In these photos it looks like it's silvery, but you'll just have to trust me that in person that shimmer is more gold.  My camera just refused to capture it.

This is quite different from Pink Spice; with Pink Spice you tend to only see the pink or the orange depending on the lighting, whereas with Aztec you see all the colours on the nail.

All in all, whilst I thought the quality of Aztec let it down a little bit (the brush even fell out of the lid), they are both very pretty polishes and definitely worth the current price.  Particularly Pink Spice - the colours in Aztec are what I'd generally associate with being in a duochrome, but Pink Spice seems a but more original.

There's also money off the 3D glitters at the moment.  I managed to convince myself, at least for a brief while, that I don't need Dream because I could recreate the same look with polishes I already have.  We shall see how long that lasts!

Over The Taupe Stars

Yesterday I discovered that John Lewis sells OPI.  This is very bad news for my bank balance.  They cost £11, so it's much cheaper to buy them online, but I was excited so I bought two anyway.  I think it's the shape of the bottle that makes them so irresistible.

Anyhoo, one of the polishes I picked up was Over The Taupe.  Below is two coats, without any top coat.  Super shiny!

It's like painting melted chocolate on to your nails.  I resisted the urge to lick it off though, probably wouldn't have been pleasant...

Also when I was in town, I went to pick up some reinforcement stickers for half moon manis, but Wilkinsons didn't have any and I couldn't be bothered looking elsewhere, so I bought some star stickers instead.  I decided to use these in today's design.

I added a coat of Saffron 01 to my thumb and ring finger, and added one veeery thick coat of a 17 black polish (that has no name) over my star stickers.  All sealed off with a coat of Seche Vite.

Since everything's so shiny it's a little hard to see, so here's a picture with the flash:

I'm quite pleased with my thumb, but the lines on my ring finger aren't as clean as I'd have liked.  This was the third attempt on that finger though - I kept getting impatient and sticking my star sticker on before everything was dry and messing it up.  Got there in the end though...  I also think maybe it would have been nice if the colours on one of the accent nails was inverted, i.e. a black star on the brown+glitter background.

What do you think?  Have you used any unusual shapes/items as templates in your nail art?

Floral Mani

Whilst painting my nails this morning, I managed to kick over a cup of coffee.  The nails got ruined in the clean up, so here's an old mani instead!

I've done flowers using a dotting tool loads of times, so I wanted to try a slightly different floral pattern.

I feel the need to say that the pattern on the sofa behind was not my choice...

For this design, I used Barry M Blueberry Ice Cream as a base.  The roses were done using Barry M Bright Pink and Max Factor Disco Pink, and the leaves were done using Barry M Mint Green and Spring Green.  If you hadn't guessed, I've got quite a few Barry M polishes in my collection...  The highlights were done using Collection 2000 French White, and it's all sealed with a coat of OPI RapiDry.

I think they ended up looking quite Cath Kidston-esque.  What do you think?

Zoya Yara + Konad

I was a little stuck for ideas today, so I decided to raid my collection of polishes that I've yet to try.  I recently bought some new Konad plates as well - not that I've used the other Konad plates I had - so I thought I'd give stamping a go too.

The Konad design is more visible in the photo below.

I used two coats of Zoya Yara, which is a lovely khaki polish packed with loads of gold shimmer (the first photo's the most colour accurate, but you can see far more gold in person).  On the accent nail is one coat of Barry M Instant Nail Effects Gold Foil, stamped with an image from Konad plate M83.  It's all sealed off with a coat of Seche Vite.

I was originally going to paint all the nails with Yara and stamp on the accent nail with the gold, as I think that polish would be perfect for stamping, but in the end I decided it'd look a bit random.  What do you think?

First Post!

After a few months of flooding all my Facebook friends' news feeds with pictures of my nails, I've decided to start a blog instead.  I'll be posting pictures of my nail art attempts, as well as the occasional swatches and reviews.

So for the time-being, here are my current nails.  I recently got my hands on some googly eyes that I desperately needed to incorporate into some nail art, and an elephant seemed the most appropriate way to do that...(I wanted to do a monkey, but I really couldn't draw one).

Apologies for the mess around my nails - the polish was really watery and I got fed up of trying to be neat.  I used Beauty UK Soft Grey (3 coats) and Barry M Blueberry Ice Cream.  The pink for the ears was just a nail art pen I got off ebay, and the black is a Sharpie.  It's all sealed off with a coat of Seche Vite - I'm hoping this'll last a little longer than my OPI RapiDry before going gloopy!