Swatch & addition: OPI The Spy Who Loved Me

My parents went a bit mad on the James Bond collection for Christmas 2012! (May well have had something to do with my telling them all about Severine's nails when we went to see it to be fair...) I got the mini Bondettes box as well as another box with full-size bottles, a bottle of Moonraker and of course The Man with the Golden Gun! My bestie also got me a bottle of this so I have a backup too, what a lucky girl.

On to the polish - OPI have done themselves proud again and this is an absolute stunner. Glass flecky red goodness.

Lots of pictures of this to try to capture the shimmer. Here's a good one I got, outside my lightbox:

For New Year's Eve I added an accent nail with some different sized rhinestones I got from Hobbycraft.

Unfortunately I managed to knock the wheel of these rhinestones on the floor while I was putting them on! This is a look I've wanted to try for ages as I see it loads on Instagram, particularly by Nails by Regina (check her out if you haven't seen her work - an amazingly skilled nail tech in the US). I need some sparklier rhinestones to get the look right but I think this wasn't bad for a first try :-)

Swatch: Accessorize Mermaid

This was the first of the Accessorize polishes I got when they brought their line out. They really are one of the  best UK ranges; they produce some beautiful shades and have been keeping up with all of the big trends such as caviar and metallics.

This is a beautiful turqouise glass fleck polish, which pulls ever so slightly more blue in real life than I was able to capture. The formula is great; it covers in two coats and is great for stamping, but it sadly loses points for removal - bit of a stainer, and you'll definitely need to use the foil method to avoid this one winding you up.

NOTD: Essence Make it Golden & OPI Don't Pretzel My Buttons

For this NOTD I started off with OPI Don't Pretzel My Buttons, a great nude shade from the Germany collection. 

I teamed it with Essence Make It Golden, which I picked up on a trip to Berlin last year. This combo was soo pretty and sparkly!

I'm going back to Berlin this spring - in about 20 days to be precise! I've been on a no-buy since the new year began but I will definitely be breaking this to pick some new polishes up while I'm over there. I've been watching all of the amazing new European polishes very closely over the last year and seriously regretting the fact that I lived in Germany before my major polish obsession began! So I can't wait to get my hands on the new design Essences, more Kikos, or any of the other great brands I've read about on lovely blogs. Watch this space for a major haul post after my trip! :D

Swatch: Chanel Blue Satin

Just before Christmas, I went to Brighton armed with my Boots points all ready to get Chanel Malice but sadly it seems the rest of Sussex got there first! Unfortunately the nice lady at the Chanel desk thought it was a good idea to get her tester out and show me how gorgeous it was anyway. Thanks pal...

Anyhow, on to the polish. Blue Satin is a deep dark blue, which in the bottle has a beautiful electric blue shimmer. This barely translates to the nail at all even in real life... Really disappointing but it is still a beautiful colour and just as I am writing this, I have realised that this would make an excellent base for Deborah Lippmann's Across the Universe!

I've included this slightly blurry picture as it's the only one I got that showed the beautiful lighter blue visible in the bottle. 

Like with the few other Chanels I have, the application of this was lovely and overall I'm pleased with the polish. I also got a lovely Chanel shopping bag with this which I'm now keeping my small collection in! Now I will just have to make sure I get my hands on Malice eventually to add to it...

Nail art: Stripes and roses

For this nail art I used Essie Lapis of Luxury. I freehanded the stripes and polka dots using a striper brush and dotting tools, before adding the roses, also with dotting tools, and their leaves with a small nail art brush.

These roses are so simple but so cute and I got a load of compliments on this NOTD. The method I use is to put a blob of red and white together on my nails and use a dotting tool to swirl them together. Lots of bloggers have done tutorials for roses so it's worth having a look around if you want to try this technique!

Swatch: Bourjois Gris Nightomic

Recently when I was on the hunt for a new base coat in Superdrug there was a three for two on make-up. (Side note, what's with nail polish always being put in the category 'make-up'...?) This was the third that I got free. I picked it up totally on a whim but I'm so glad I did because this colour is gorgeous.

I absolutely love the brushes on these new design Bourjois polishes and the colour and formula was absolutely fantastic - with careful application you could easily get away with wearing this as a thick one-coater.

OPI Mermaid's Tears and Bows

I did this nail art recently when I fancied doing something freehand. I looked for some inspiration in my WAH Nails Book of Nail Art (I will post about this at some point!) and settled on the 'Polka Bows', without the polka!

I started with a base of OPI Mermaid's Tears. I then used a white (can't remember exactly which but probably China Glaze White on White) to make a bow shape, before finishing them off using a Models Own nail art pen. These were reasonably easy but I still need a bit of practice on straightening out my lines, especially on my right hand! Nonetheless I got a load of compliments on these and spent a lot of time staring at them myself!

Accessorize 4D Nails in Stardom

So one day while I was browsing Instagram I spotted a picture of Accessorize's answer to the caviar/'fish egg' trend, so of course I rushed out and picked some up.

The display in Superdrug where I got these had already been plundered by the time I got down there so only these two 'shades' were left! They were on 3 for 2 so I picked up 'Idol' and two lots of 'Stardom', one of which I gave to my sis.

The instructions on the back of the packaging.

Here's the finished look. After all the kerfuffle when Ciate released their Caviar set I was a bit put off this trend (at that point theirs was the only 'set' available) but I received one of their sets from an old friend for my birthday and ended up adoring it. I love different textures in nail art and this definitely ticks that box!

At only £5 per set (against Ciate's £18) this is definitely the budget-friendly option, as well as being much more easily available to pick up from the high street. However the Ciate set was a better all-rounder in my opinion: firstly, the tray provided to catch the beads is much bigger - and I still manage to get a few beads outside the tray even using that one! The second benefit to the Ciate set is the useful little funnel you get. The bottles above for the Accessorize set have been designed with a funnel 'built in' to the bottle, so you can use it to dispense the beads with accuracy and to get any leftover beads back in the bottle. However, the funnel is way too small so the beads have a tendency to get stuck in the neck. In the end I settled for removing the funnel part altogether and this made application much easier. I then used the Ciate funnel to get the leftover beads back in the bottle!

As much as I love this look, sadly the beads had still pretty much all fallen off within a couple of hours and I am still searching for a way to get them to stay on longer... Watch this space!

Bling appliques and OPI Don't Pretzel My Buttons

I picked these appliques up from Sallys for about £7 (I think...!), made by a company called Bling. Their range are like nails wraps but mainly seemed based around rhinestones of various types. These aren't actually rhinestones, they actually seem to be clear blobs of something... But they were very sparkly and pretty in real life and looked like them, anyhow! I put these over OPI Don't Pretzel My Buttons from the Germany collection. The application was okay, usual 'file over the edge' instruction which was a little difficult when the blobs were right on the edge of the nail. There was a little bit of wrinkling at the edges but it wasn't too noticeable in real life. I was left with probably just about enough wraps left over for another full application - the packet also suggests cutting them into smaller shapes which could be interesting.

I absolutely loved the look of these in real life, they looked so sparkly and pretty when they caught the light but sadly this didn't transfer to the pics! Trust me, these were gorge.