Review – Sugar Apple Gelly Hi-Shine by Barry M

Sugar Apple Gelly Hi-Shine by Barry M

Sugar Apple is a very pretty Spring colours that’s just been added to Barry M’s Gelly Hi-Shine collection. It’s a soft, yet at the same time quite bright baby blue with maybe just the slightest touch of green in it. If I had to give it a name it would be ‘mint blue’ – it has that same slightly frosty feel to it as a mint green. When I bought it I also got a new white and Mango Gelly Hi-Shine, which it turned this colour goes really well with – it’s always fun to put complementary colours together, especially as the weather starts brightening up!

I found that Sugar Apple went on quite thickly, and I had to be careful not to put too much on my brush. It went on quite evenly though and was fairly opaque even on the first layer. It lives up to its name and has a high-gloss finish, although I always use a top coat for durability. However, even with a top coat this polish doesn’t seem very resilient, after a couple of days there was a lot of chipping and flaking, although that could be something to do with all the Spring cleaning I’ve been doing lately!

I personally think this shade would look really pretty with a matte finish – it’s a shame that matte polishes are so few and far between these days! But even as a gloss this is a lovely shade for Spring, and should carry on well into the Summer as well. The other shades in the new collection were also quite pretty, but out of the ones I saw this was definitely my favourite with Rose Hip coming out second. It’s priced at £3.99 and if you’re lucky both Boots and Superdrug should still be running their 3 for 2 offers on Barry M cosmetics – if you can choose between either I’d go for Superdrug – they always seem to have a greater selection for Barry M in my experience.

Review – Mediterranean by Barry M

Mediterranean is a very pretty two-toned polish that reflects shades of pink/orange/gold depending on the light. In the picture above which was taken in natural light it appears more of an orange gold, but in artificial light you get a lot more of a pink sheen. The polish goes very nicely with the limited edition gold flake Barry M polish that I got at Christmas – it really bring out the golden tones. It doesn’t have a name on the bottle however and as it’s limited edition, you may want to scour Ebay if you’re wanting to get your hands on that one. The Treasure Chest polish that’s part of the Aquarium collection will probably go just as nicely.

The polish goes on very well, very smoothly. It tends to go on quite thinly, after my first layers I thought I’d need at least three but fortunately it was opaque after two coats. It does okay in terms of endurance but I am seeing a few chips now that it’s been a few days – the nails with the flake top coat are still going strong though.

Although I don’t like this one as much as the Atlantic polish from Barry M’s Aquarium collection, it is very pretty and would go lovely with a gold outfit/accessories. If you put it on I would recommend going with the gold accents on the ring finger just for that extra pop! This one is £3.99 – you can either take advantage of the offer going on at Superdrug right now, which is any three £3.99 Barry M polishes for £9 or the Boots offer which is 3 for 2 on any cosmetics.

Review – Mushroom & In the Surf

Review – ‘Mushroom’ by Barry M & ‘In the Surf’ by Seventeen

You lucky things I have two new polishes to review for you today – the first is ‘Mushroom’ by Barry M, a soft brown varnish and the other is ‘In the Surf’ by Seventeen, a blue, pink and white sequin top coat. I love how these two go together – it seems like In the Surf was made for a neutral base. I also tried it on white which looked quite nice but you do lose the white sequins.

Mushroom is a gorgeous colour, I don’t have many neutrals in my collection but this one is a lovely soft shade that looks really nice on pale skin (very useful if like me, you haven’t seen proper sun in a few years 😉 ). It goes on really smoothly and you only need a single thin coat to get brilliant, opaque coverage. In daylight it looks perhaps a touch more saturated and a little less grey than it does in the picture, but it’s pretty close. For £2.99 this one’s a steal, and a staple colour at that for whenever you’re looking for something other than a French Manicure to wear with neutrals.

In the Surf was an impulse buy that I chose to take advantage of Boots’ 3 for 2 deal they currently have on cosmetics. Again, although I don’t normally do for sequin top coats this one is great and I’m glad I decided to pick it up! It’s all pale shades of blue, pink, white, and occasionally orange (although there doesn’t seem to be too many of the orange sequins, they’re quite sparse but I think that gives a nice contrasting effect that wouldn’t work quite as well if there were too many).

One coat of this is pretty good but I personally preferred the coverage given by a couple of coats of this. It spreads quite well and evenly and all the sequins don’t just get stuck at the top of the nail at the end of the stroke as they can with some polishes. I love this one on neutral colours – I’m not sure the combination would work too well on brights. This varnish is by Seventeen, so you’ll only find it at Boots – they had a few different colours available so why not go down and take advantage of the 3 for 2 offer if this polish catches your eye? It’s £3.99 on its own.

Review: Mermaid by Barry M

I just got my new polishes from Barry M’s ‘Aquarium’ collection! Out of the six available I chose Pacific, Mediterranean and Mermaid. I liked Atlantic as well, but my Peridot by Chanel polish is already similar, and I wasn’t too keen on Treasure Chest or Caspian. I do however LOVE the three that I chose – this Aquarium theme is right up my street with rich, jewel tones and beautiful shimmers.

This was originally going to be review of Mermaid AND Pacific, with Mermaid featuring only on my ring finger. However, once I started with Mermaid on one finger, I just couldn’t help myself – I had to have it on every finger! I loved it too much to limit it to just the one (not that I don’t love Pacific as well, I’ll be sure to give that it’s own review. As for here, it will just have to be satisfied with being a very pretty and complementary base colour).

The collection is very cleverly put together, with Mermaid and Pacific being very complementary when worn together, and Mediterranean would look very nice with Treasure Chest. Mermaid is one of my favourite polishes in a long time, which is unusual as I don’t usually go for sequin polishes – I especially don’t usually apply them on every nail as they can be so difficult to remove, but I just couldn’t stop myself! It has a variety of gorgeous blues, green and golds which look glorious on top of the metallic blue shimmer of Pacific.

You may have a personal preference as to how much coverage you want from a sequin coat – I personally wanted quite a full coverage, and it took a while to make sure that I had a nice even coat all over my nail. It goes on quite thick if you’re not careful so be careful not to overload your brush. You also want to give the bottle a good shake before you apply it, otherwise you’ll just be applying clear varnish without any sequins.

It dried pretty quickly once I’d applied a top coat, which adding just that extra little bit of shine that made an already beautiful polish really shine. It’s holding up pretty well, no chips so far – as a sequin polish I imagine it’s pretty hardy (something I’ll be less happy about when it comes to taking it off I imagine!) You’ll want a pretty decent layer of top coat on this otherwise the texture will drive you mad, you don’t want the little sequins catching on everything – which can be annoying when doing things like washing your hair for example, but again, a decent top coat should prevent this from being a problem.

Overall, for £3.99 (or £2.99 if you get it in the two for £6 sale currently going on at Superdrug on £3.99 Barry M polishes) this is a must-buy. After a disappointment with Barry M’s Silk Collection, this new Aquarium collection has more than made up for it. I can’t wait to try Mediterranean too!

Delicate Pink Tutorial

I liked this design so much that I decided to wear it on my own nails and write a tutorial so you guys could try it at home 🙂 This one’s really easy, no special techniques or extra equipment required, just some polish and your mitts 😉

What I Used:

Barry M Nail Paint – Strawberry Ice-Cream – £2.99

Barry M Nail Effects – Silver Foil, Lady, Duchess – £3.99 each

Barry M Silk – Pearl – £3.99

Barry M Basecoat & Topcoat – £2.99

Tutorial

Difficulty – 2/10

There’s nothing to this at all except layers, the only downside meaning you might have to wait around a bit for your nails to dry – but it’s worth it for this pretty design!

1. Apply basecoat.

2. Apply two layers of Strawberry Ice-Cream to your thumb, index finger and pinky.

3. Apply two layers of Pearl to your middle finger.

4. Apply two layers of Silver Foil to your ring finger.

5. Apply two layers of Duchess to your thumb (that’s the pink glitter).

6. Apply two layers of Lady to your middle finger (that’s a white glitter).

7. Apply top coat.

And that’s all there is to it!

If you’d like to buy my false nail set with this design, you can purchase it at my Etsy store here: https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/181456993/pink-fake-nails-handpainted-false-nails

Red Glitter by Barry M

Red Glitter by Barry M – Review

I’ve been out shopping for new nail polishes again, and one of the ones I picked up was Red Glitter by Barry M. The colour’s exactly what it says on the tin – red glitter. I was excited about trying this out, thinking I’d get a sort of ruby slipper effect. However the colour wasn’t exactly what I expected, rather than being red with glitter in it, the polish is mostly transparent with red glitter in it. The nails shown above have a red base coat with the glitter on top. It did have quite a nice effect applied on top of the red, but it wasn’t quite the same colour as it appeared on the bottle, and it was a bit annoying that I had to apply another colour first. One upside to this however is that you can apply it on top of different colours and see what effects you can make.

I put two coats on, but the nails were already pretty well covered with the first one. I don’t know if you can build up to a solid colour using the glitter alone with enough coats, but I imagine it would take quite a few and you’d work through the bottle pretty quickly. You need to put a top coat on top to avoid having a grainy texture from the glitter, but having a top coat on really makes the colour brighten up and stand out. It’s quite pretty, but the end result wasn’t quite what I’d hoped. I’d say it’s quite a limiting polish as, with most glitter varnishes, there’s not many other varnishes you can put it with; although there are one or two things you could try – maybe using it with a shiny black gloss on the nail tips.

Overall, although it’s an okay colour, I’m not sure I’ll buy it again once it runs out.

Barry M Corrector Pen

Barry M Nail Paint Corrector Pen

Usually if I need to clean up my nail polish a bit after applying it I just use a cotton bud dipped in nail polish remover, however cotton buds have a blunt edge that can sometimes take the polish off where you don’t want it to, or it can be a bit fiddly getting it into the polish remover without spilling it everywhere.

When I was out in Leeds I saw this corrector pen in the 3 for 2 offer they had on Barry M products at Superdrug, so I thought I’d give it a go. It’s really easy to use and does exactly what it says on the tin, you literally just use it like a pen to remove nail polish wherever you want. It has a slanted tip so you can be really precise when using it – it also comes with two extra nibs so it’ll last for ages. You don’t need to shake it or anything else you literally just ‘colour in’ where your stray nail polish is. I imagine this could work pretty well with nail art as well.

It’s only a fiver, which is even better value when you factor the 3 for 2 deal in, which both Boots and Superdrug almost always have on. It removes nail polish quickly and easily, even the darker shades. If you don’t want to spend the extra bit of money there’s always the cotton bud, but this method is a lot quicker, easier and neater (and no spills!) Just another reason to love Barry M’s nail products!