My summer is peach and turquoise

The other day I looked at my short, naked nails and though ‘oh, so boring!’. They really needed a facelift (nail lift?), and with the weather having been really lovely all week I wanted to go for something really summery. I decided to go for a combination of Barry M’s gorgeous polish Peach Melba (which reminds me of cocktails and ice cream, and which also makes the giggle cause my cat’s name is Melba), topped with a layer of Tropical Punch by Seventeen Colour Clash Nail Effects. This just adds a bit of fun to the look with its chunky bits of green, blue, white and light pink. I finished off the look with a thick layer of top coat so that the bits wouldn’t fall off.

Midi rings are really on trend at the moment, and I bought my first pair of them a couple of weeks ago at Accessorize, when out for a typical Saturday shopping trip with my favourite blogger Mode of Style. I’m really picky when it comes to rings in particular, and don’t want to wear fake silver due to the awful green colour they turn into and colour your fingers with, so these midi rings are from Accessorize’s sterling silver range. I love them both, but as you can probably guess, the one with the little turquoise stone is my favourite.

As if this wasn’t summery enough, I received a parcel in the post the other day containing this stunning silver bracelet with turquoise stones and pearls. This was a gift from The Jewellery People, and from the moment I saw it I fell in love! I adore turquoise and light blue jewellery for summer, and it’s just perfect that it goes so well with the blue accents in my nail polish, as well as with my midi rings.

What do you think of my summer nails, midi rings, and turquoise bling matching? Is it not a great combo?!

I can see myself wearing this bracelet a lot this summer, as it goes with pretty much everything, and adds a splash of colour to a neutral outfit.

From WAG to style icon

Urgh... it's that time again... the bloody World Cup in football!

If someone forced me to watch a game I wouldn't be able to tell you who won by how many goals, or who scored... What I would be able to tell you, on the other hand, is what player had a certain colour on his shoes, or a funky hairstyle. Or maybe even what his girlfriend in the audience looked like!

The most famous WAG of them all is of course the one and only Victoria Beckham. Here she is, quite a few years ago, with singer Cheryl Cole as company, who was also dating a football player at the time.

We don't see them looking like this anymore, do we!? Victoria, especially, has completely changed her style since then, and nowadays you'll only see her in extremely sophisticated and stylish clothes - sometimes from her own collection.

Victoria Beckham was, as you know, already famous through the pop group Spice Girls before she became the WAG of football player David Beckham. However, it's due to his succesful career in football that she started getting seen out more. And when she was constantly being followed by paparazzis, she made sure she always looked flawless. Just look at the two of them in this photo from May this year - what a gorgeous couple!

 Victoria has really taken advantage of her fame by creating her own fashion emporium. Here she is, seen out in New York just a couple of weeks ago, wearing a stunning coral dress with matching shoes.Quite different to her earler WAG style she used to have when being spotted in the football crowd.

She still occasionally attends other sporting events, but her current style is far more sophisticated and stylish than it used to be. This photo was taken at Wimbledon last year.

So, as you can see I get quite distracted when it comes to football. I find everything around it a lot more interesting, including WAGs and the footballers' appearance. 

And talking about what the players look like... I actually came across a bit of a fun widget made by Ladbrokes Bingo, called 'World Cup Hot or Not'. You basically pick the hottest players from around the world, and create your own dream team based on their looks. 

Why not try for yourself? I wonder if this is how Victoria ruled out the other players when choosing her David? ;)

Introducing Mr Fashion Infatuation - male OOTD

Today is Mr Fashion Infatuation's debut on the blog! Exciting times!

He's usually the one behind the camera, but this time it's his turn to strike his best poses.

I was asked by the lovely people at Guide London if I wanted to treat my man to a shirt, courtesy of them, and there was just no question about it! I've only heard good things about Guide London, and I was excited to see for myself whether their quality is as good as they say. Let's just say neither myself nor the Mr were disappointed!

The shirt he chose is a long sleeved double collar shirt in grey with red accents that create a great contrast. I love the collar, and the button details, as this makes the shirt look very interesting and smart. Depending on what you wear with the shirt you can make it look more or less smart, and Mr Fashion Infatuation has gone for a semi-smart look - shirt, jeans, and leather shoes, topped off with a couple of great accessories.

The jeans, which are of a dark denim wash, are from Next.
(Look at my little poser cat wanting a feature on my blog as well!)

This stunning black skeletton style watch (where you see the cogs turning in the background) with metallic blue hands is from the luxury watch brand Stührling. I absolutely love it!

The black leather belt with a stainless steel buckle is from Next, and creates a great contrast between the shirt and the jeans.

 

The semi-formal shoes in black leather, are just like the jeans and belt, also from Next. I guess this is the Mr's favourite highstreet clothes shop.

Not a bad blog debut, do you think?

For me it's been really interesting writing about male fashion for once. 

Let me know if you'd like to see more of this in the future.

Broken mirrors and superstitions

You all know that I’ve got a bit of an (read a big) obsession with nail polish, and today I came across a picture of this awesome looking manicure by the very talented blogger Copycat Claws. The manicure is a silver base with black details, and resembles a broken mirror – really clever!

The ironic thing is that I found this particular picture today of all days – Friday the 13^th!

I don’t know if you’re superstitious, but I think we all know that a broken mirror generally means bad luck, and the number 13 tends to be an unlucky number. Double bad luck for me today?

One of my best friends (who happens to be Irish) was absolutely thrilled when a bird shit on her leg once when we were sitting having lunch in the park. I just looked at her questioningly, but according to the Irish superstitions (and they’re the ones who are supposed to be the lucky people) this is supposed to bring you good luck.

This got me thinking… How superstitious do we tend to be? 

I am not one bit superstitious, and don’t believe that black cats, walking under ladders, or putting your keys on the table will make any difference to my life. Neither do I believe the opposite – that 2 magpies, a penny on the ground or a 4 leaf clover will bring me good luck. However, according to a recent infographic made by Tombola over a third of the people in Yorkshire are superstitious, and a whole 7 out of 10 UK citizens have some sort of superstitions when it comes to Friday the 13^th – some so bad that they won’t even leave the house in that particular day… Crazy, but interesting.

Maybe I should go out tonight wearing something like this, and see what happens? ;)

Water marble nail art tutorial

After having seen quite a few images on various blogs with this so called 'water marble nail art' I was dying to try it for myself, but I had no clue whatsoever on HOW??! 

I watched a tutorial or two on how to do it and failed big time, until... until I found this amazing You Tube-er called My Simple Little Pleasures. I watched pretty much all of her fantastic videos with how to guides on how to do water marble nail art, and after a couple more tries I nailed it! 

Not sorry for that pun at all by the way ;)

The first thing you need to do for this type of nail art is prepare.

Pick your polishes for a start. I've chosen to go for a very neutral marble with 4 different colours;

Seventeen Mocha

Barry M Lychee

Barry M Black

Barry M White

You also need a good top coat to finish it all off with. One that I can recommend that goes really hard and that dries quickly is No7 Gel-Look Shine top coat.

Just bear in mind that all colours don't work together. I.e they might not spread on the water, they might spread too much, or they might even sink - so it's worth it giving them a test drive beforehand.

Apart from your nail polishes, this is what you'll need in order to create your water marble nail art:

Small disposable cup filled with room temperatured water

Sellotape

Scissors

Tooth picks (or an orange stick)

Kitchen roll (or napkins)

 

1. Start by putting all your materials on the table so that they're easy accesible.

2. Tape your fingers with sellotape to avoid getting too much nail polish on your skin.

The easiest way to tape a finger is to place a short piece right below your cuticle, and then one longer piece that goes around the sides of your nail.

3. Start dripping nail polish into your water filled cup, one drop at the time. Don't drop from too high up as this may cause the nail polish to sink. The drop of nail polish will spread out and create a ring on the water surface. Drip your next drop of nail polish inside the first one, and keep doing this until you have a so called 'bulls eye'.

4. Now try to be as quick as possible. Get your tooth pick or orange stick ans start drawing a pattern in the nail polish. Don't start at the very outer ring though as that will be too dry, but start 2-3 rings in. How you draw it is up to you and you'll find your way by experimenting. You can either start drawing from the outer ring and in, ot from the middle and out.

5. Line up your taped fingers (you can do more than one finger at the time) above a piece of the pattern that you like. Dunk the fingers in the water, and KEEP THEM THERE.

Whilst you still have your fingers in the water, clean up the excess polish on the surface of the water with your tooth pick.

Once the surface is clear, slowly pull your fingers out.

Remove your sellotape using the scissors, clean up the polish that has ended up on your fingers rather than on your nails with the help on a cotton stick, and... VOILÀ!

But... since I'm really picky with my nails and I didn't quite like the big spaces where I only ended up with one colour, I've decided to use my nail art dotting tool to add some quirky little polka dots.

And this is my finished result of water marble nail art mixed with the dotting technique.

Just don't forget to seal it all with your top coat once it's all dry, to make it last longer.

I'm pretty pleased with this nail art, especially since I'm newbie when it comes to water marble.

What do you think? 

Have you ever tried it or thought of giving it a go?

New shoes cure the blues - GIVEAWAY

How do you feel when having purchased a pair of new shoes? Great? Well, of course!

Now imagine if you got a pair of new shoes for free... how does that make you feel? A hundred times better, right?

Well, here's your chance to get your hands (or feet) on a pair of new shoes of your choice, as Fashion Infatuation has teamed up with Daniel Footwear for an exclusive giveaway, where we are giving away a gift card worth £50 to one lucky reader of this blog. Exciting, right?! :)

The winner obviously doesn't have to spend their gift card on just shoes, but perhaps you'd prefer a new handbag for summer? Daniel Footwear stock a number of famous brands, such as Armani Jeans, DKNY, etc - so you're in for a treat!

Have I got you hooked yet? ;)

All you have to do to enter this giveaway for a chance to win a gift card at Daniel Footwear is to do the different options in the Rafflecopter widget below. 

And as usual - the more entry options you complete, the higher the chance to win.

Good luck to you all!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

House of Fraser fashion event in Leeds

Last Friday, House of Fraser in Leeds invited me to their new season fashion show and blogger event, which took place at Baracoa bar just off Call Lane.

 Myself, Kristina from Mode of Style, and Dasa from Mode Lily headed down there prepared with our cameras, and I think we were all pleasantly surprised by the event.

The fact is that House of Fraser held a similar House of Fashion event earlier this year which Kristina and I attended, but unfortunately we were both quite disappointed by it. This was due to the inappropriate bar owner who had decided to present the event even though he knew absolutely nothing about fashion. He came out with some really rude and sexist comments that made us all feel uncomfortable, but someone must have given him some feedback for this time, cause it was a lot better now.

There was also more focus on the pretty woman who actually works at House of Fraser, which made sense. She was absolutely amazing and so stunning in her black jumpsuit!

We sat right next to the catwalk, in the “frow”, and had a great view of all the new collections from brands such as Biba, French Connection and Levi’s.

I managed to snap about 100 photos during the show, but have filtered them down and am now showing you my favourite models and outfits. The black model with the Mohawk-like hair was my absolute favourite, closely followed by the alternative woman with black hair and a fringe which you can see wearing a long coral skirt in one of the photos.

Unfortunately I couldn’t keep track of what outfit was from what brand, but one thing is sure – you can find them all at House of Fraser this summer.

Which one of these outfits are your favourite?

I must say I have a thing for the coral skirt, and the long cobalt blue flowing dress.

Have a look through the rest of my favourites below.

Additionally, I want to thank House of Fraser for inviting me to this event.