Accessorize Nail Speckle: Bumble Bee

Today I'm wearing a new polish of mine from Accessorize's new range of speckle polishes.

I always see a lot of speckle polishes on American blogs but there isn't really anything like this on the market in the UK so I was keen to pick one up! The colour is 'Bumble Bee' and it's a lovely autumnal orange colour with speckles of  black - great for Halloween as well!

In these pictures I'm actually wearing it over a base of a clay orange/browny colour from Xtras. (Another bargain shop I love but can only frequent when I visit my mum in North Yorkshire, as they don't have any stores in the south.) The base colour  is a little darker than the Accessorize orange shade, but very similar. I found that when I applied two coats of Bumble Bee it was speckle overload, but I wanted to do 2 coats to make sure it was opaque. To be honest, you could probably get away with one coat of the Accessorize shade.

I used a couple of coats of Seche Vite to finish it off. Overall - I'm impressed - it's quite an impressive effect but not too 'in your face'. I'm keen to try some of the others in the range!

Red and Silver Lace Stamping Nail Art

Sorry I've been away for a while! I've had a crazy week or so... Anyway, here is an update with the mani I wore this weekend... 

I loved this design and unfortunately the pictures really don't do it justice...

The base colour I used was Revlon Matte Suede in 'Ruby Ribbon'. I think this is a discontinued line as I picked it up at Poundland! They had a few nice Revlon colours last time I was in, but that was a couple of weeks ago. Although the colour is lovely and the matte effect is gorgeous the polish was very hard to apply and looked quite uneven, however after a couple of shiny top coats of Seche Vite it wasn't so apparent (although it wasn't matte any more). 

The stamping  plate I used was BM-315 and I used my striping tape from Amazon. Previously I've mentioned that I've found the tape doesn't last long and gets a bit worse for wear after a day, however I think I've cracked it! I used very thick layers of Seche Vite and made sure that it completely covered the tape. I wore these nails for 3 days and the tape was still as good as new.

Golden Butterfly Nail Art

Today I decided to use one of my new polishes - Models Own 'Copper Pot' as it's a lovely autumn colour. The leaves are really falling now and I love all the golden brown colours everywhere!

The base colour looks really good with the black stamping. Alone it wasn't perhaps as good as I thought it would be, in the bottle it looked like it had a lot more dimension to the colour - with darker tones in it (as you can see in the link above). On it's own it's a bit more of a brighter glittery gold. I did like it, but it wasn't quite what I was expecting.

I created the effect using the BM-307 plate and used MUA 'Black', topped off with a coat of Seche Vite (a pretty thick coat - which I'm finding mitigates the chance of the stamping smudging!)

Lilac with White Stamped Stripes

Today I’ve done some fairly simple stamping which looks quite effective!

The polish I’ve used is Nails Inc ‘Primrose Hill’ which is kind of a greyish lilac colour – very beautiful and shimmery! I’ve got the limited edition jewelled bottle thanks to the lovely girls at work. It was very appropriate birthday present, especially considering that Primrose Hill is one of my most favourite places in London!

Pretty Bottle!

The stamping is done with  Konad ‘White’ and plate BM-316 and it’s finished off with a couple of coats of Seche Vite. I think I needed another coat of the polish, but you can only tell in the pictures – it wasn’t at all apparent when you just looked at them. I actually got a lot of complements for these nails – I think because they are quite striking! 

Matte Teal Chevron Nail Art

I had a couple of hours to spare today so I decided to try something more time consuming.  Well, I say I had more time, but I was actually putting off doing work for my masters degree. I am officially the queen of procrastination!

I went for some pretty chevron nails, finished off with some striping tape to make the effect more striking..

The lovely teal colour I used is Rimmel ‘Sky High’ and I did the chevrons by taping off sections with sellotape and painting them with Models Own ‘Mushroom’. The striping tape is from Amazon. I used some Rimmel ‘Matte Finish’ top coat to finish it off.

What do you think?

Deep Pink Criss Cross Nail Stamping

I really like this mani – I think the results are effective but quite discreet. The colour looks a bit red when it’s on – but it’s a deep pink colour in the bottle. 

I’ve had this polish for a while, so the name has rubbed off the label but I think it’s called ‘Foxglove’. The stamping plate used is BM-310 and the polish I used for stamping is Mua ‘Black’.

I topped it off with a couple of coats of Seche Vite. 

Change of Platform and Apologies...

Just a quick update post to let you know that I've just transitioned my post from Wordpress to Blogger/blogspot. The reason behind this is that, as many of you may know, Google stopped all non (Google-owned) Blogger and Blogspot platforms from being able to use Google Friend Connect. They are suggesting that people now use a Google + button as an alternative.

My blogging platform of choice is Wordpress but after spending a lot of time looking at the nail blogging community, Google Friend Connect appears to be the following 'weapon of choice'. Therefore, not having this network on my blog is giving me a distinct disadvantage. My feelings towards Google aren't the warmest at the moment, and now I've had to spend a significant amount of time transferring everything across to a more restrictive platform, they are becoming increasingly cold. I can see their business sense in doing this, since their mission seems to be to have complete control of the web, but from a user point of view it's pretty bad.

So, here is my blog, powered by a different platform. I'm just so grateful that I don't have an established blog with thousands of lost followers due to Google's update.

Finally - apologies to anyone who commented on my previous blog, there is no way to easily transfer them across, so I've not deleted you - I really value every comment on my blog and I'm really sad to lose the comments I had.