Primark Neons swatch

If you hadn't noticed, the weather is amazing in the UK right now! With the summer weather finally arriving, it's time to take out the neon colours. Yesterday, I went into Primark and saw these neon polishes (and a few colour collections) at £2 for a box of 4. Mega bargain!

Unfortunately, my camera struggled to get the colours right. The pink and orange are accurate, but the green and yellow are tons brighter in real life. The yellow is more of a highlighter yellow, with shimmer, and the green is super bright, and kinda yellow-ish.

For the swatches, I painted each of my nails except the ring finger in a solid colour. For the ring finger, I put some of each colour on the nail then swirled them together at the edges. This created a colourful tie-dye effect. The inspiration for this was from Nail Stories.

The swatches are two coats of each colour. This got them to be the same colour as they appear in the bottle. The application was a bit difficult as the brushes didn't flatten out too well for me, but clean up isn't a huge issue. Also, I'm not a huge fan of "fat lids", I prefer the skinny ones as in Barry M polishes. But that's just down to personal preference. The formula was to be expected of cheap polishes. It was streaky in the first coat, and kinda uneven, but with a second coat and a top coat it was fine. Also, the smell was odd... it's as if they used something to cover up the usual chemical smells, but I can't put my finger on what it is.

Overall, I think they're well worth the price and I look forward to trying more of Primark's collections!
On a side note, the yellow looks like it could be a dupe of China Glaze's "Sun Kissed" from their 2012 Summer Neons collection. I have that coming in the post, so as soon as it arrives I'll do a comparison!

Pink and Green circle stamping

Before I start today's post, I want to apologise for  the terrible stamping on my nails. Hayfever has been killing me all weekend, and it doesn't help that I live right across the road from a field of rapeseed. Lining up the stamp with the nail isn't easy when you have streaming eyes and a running nose, y'know!

Anyway, I'll stop with the whining. The base colour I used was Barabra Daly Make Up's "Kiwi" and the stamping colour was Nails Inc's "OMP!". The stamping plate was BM206.

The pink didn't come out quite as bright as I'd have hoped, but I think the manicure still looks good. Lining up the stamp is definitely something I need to improve on... Does anyone have any tips?

Pink Spice and Indigo zebra print

I find it boring to just have a nail polish colour on my nails. Yes, it's pretty, but other than that there isn't much to look at. But that's just my opinion. SO, I've stamped some zebra print onto the same Pink Spice colour as yesterday. I call it zebra print, but I'm not really too sure what it is. It could be a tiger print I suppose, but I wouldn't know what the difference between them. I think my nails today look more like a tiger because of the orange tones to Pink Spice.

The base coat is Accessorize's "Pink Spice" (obviously) and the stamping colour is Barry M's "Indigo". The stamping plate I used was BM223.

 

I think Indigo has worked quite well as a stamping polish, although I'm not too sure how well it would do over colours other than reds/pinks/purples. I think overall my nails look so cute and sparkly! I love them.

Accessorize's "Pink Spice" swatch

Another post already?! This is madness.

Although, I think it's necessary. Yesterday, I went to a Superdrug other than my local one purely because I was walking past and was pleasently surprised to find that there were other brands that my Superdrug doesn't stock. Namely, Accessorize. I think I'd first heard of this brand from Pretty Punk UK's blog post and fell in love with "Pink Spice", so I just had to buy it.

The swatches are 4 coats and a top coat. I think you could get away with 3 coats, but I felt that the nail line was still too visible, so added another.

I love this polish! To describe it, it's a sort-of copper colour with pink/red tones to it. At some angles, it appears orange and at others it's a pink-red-purple like in the pictures. The index finger in the first picture shows most accurately the orange colour. It's just all so pretty! The only issue I have with it is that with the amount of glitter I can tell it's going to be a pain in the arse to take off. Oh well, I think it's worth it.

Yellow and Blue gradients

A trend that is sweeping the nail-world right now is gradients. I think a part of this style gaining popularity is through Sammy from The Nailasaurus posting her tutorial which makes creating gradients a hell of a lot easier. You can find that here. This is the technique I used to paint my nails.

The yellow is Barry M's "Lemon Ice Cream" and the blue is Max Factor's "Candy Blue".

I've still not decided whether or not this combination is something I like. The colours are very bright and "in-your-face", but at the same time there's something hypnotising and summer-y about them.

Thoughts?

Green-on-green stamping

Today, I have more stamping on my nails. To me, it looks as though it could be dragon skin if it were a bit darker.

The colours used were a base coat of Barry M's "Mint Green" and a stamping colour of a dark green from La Femme Beauty which doesn't have a name (picture further down). The image plate used was BM223.

The stamping colour I used didn't come out as dark as I'd hoped, it kinda blends in with the base colour. However, I think it still works and looks just as pretty. Just goes to show, even if a mani doesn't turn out how you'd wanted it to, it can still be gorgeous.