Barry M Textured Nail Effects Nail Paints

Hi! Today you get a look at my terrible stubby fingernails. I've been trying out these new Textured Nail Effects polishes by Barry M and I really like 'em!

 

These are pastel coloured polishes with a special gritty effect. The pink is called Kingsland Road, the yellow Station Road, the green Ridley Road and the blue is Atlantic Road.

They retail for £3.99 each but I picked them up at 2 for £6 from Superdrug (at the same time they were at 3 for 2 in Boots which would have saved me about 3p :P If you shop around you can usually find a deal on Barry M somewhere)

Now have a look at them and please ignore my poor ravaged cuticles. I've posted lots of photos to try and show the textured effects.

  

I don't know if you can see in the pictures but the yellow has a slight shimmer to it, the others are matte.

The effect is very easy to apply, you just paint it on like any polish and the grit gets more pronounced as it dries. Applying it really feels no different from a regular polish either. These photos all show 2 coats of polish over a base coat (they were all nearly opaque in 1 but the extra coat made the grit more defined as well as making it completely opaque). Oddly I found that, though the bottle specifies to use one, the effect is much more pronounced if you don't use a base coat so in the future I probably won't bother with one. I've heard some people say these are a nightmare to remove but I didn't have a problem at all, it's much easier than glitter!

The feeling of these on the nails is an acquired taste. At first I felt really creeped out touching them but then I got a bit obsessed with it! It doesn't feel too gritty, just sort of bumpy, and luckilly they didn't catch on my tights at all. These lasted about 4-5 days before the started chipping, which was pretty good considering you can't really use top coat on them. Oddly the different colours had different rates of chipping, the yellow was the first to go, then green, then blue and finally pink.

Anyway I really like these. I love the easter-egg colours and the gritty texture takes them away from being too pastel and ice-creamy. £3.99 is a good price for a polish but like I said shop around. If you like the effect but are interested in other colours then in the US Milani have just released some (see swatches here at Nouveau Cheap) or Nails Inc have a few but they are much more expensive (still might get the pretty grey one though). What do you think?

NOTD - Hot Lava

Stand back, it'll burn ya!  

These nails were Pixie A La Mode's idea and turned out to be one of the prettiest manicures I've ever done! It's meant to look like molten magma, I think it's quite effective! 

  

 

To do this I started with a base of 2 coats of Barry M Tangerine (which is a shimmery bright orange) then when that dried I added a large drop of Models Own 25 Karat Gold polish (shimmery gold) and a large drop of a shimmery bright red polish (it's a really old one from Icing with no name) and swirled them together using a tiny dotting tool. When that was all dry I added a coat of black crackle (I used Barry M Nail Effects). 

I think it looked gorgeous! Because the black crackle is matte on top of the shimmery red and golds it really looks like the drying surface of magma. Fantastic idea Pixie :D

a FOTD and some recent nails

I've finally caught up on replying to comments! Woooo! My Makeup Critic rant took quite a while because all of you guys were great and had really good things to say :)

Here's a simple FOTD from a little while back. I know my lipstick is Topshop's Brighton Rock which is a fantastic coraly-pinky colour. It reminds me of Barry M Flamingo Pink polish. Other than that it's just some black eyeliner, mascara and some sort of pink blush. I need to start making little lists of what I'm wearing when I take photos!                                   

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

 

 

I have wet hair, which is why it looks so weird. I can't explain the mental look in my eyes though :P

And now for some nice manicures I've done recently. I have terrible looking nails because I have a nervous habit of ripping off my cuticles and the skin around my nails. I'm trying to keep my nails polished at all times because it means I'm less likely to do it and ruin my polish!

This is 2 coats of Barry M Fuschia and then about a million coats of Barry M Once Upon a Time. It was incredibly irritating as the glitter polish seemed to take hours to dry so I kept smudging, but it was oh so worth it!

 

Flash:

 

This is 3 coats of Accessorize Pink Spice polish (it only needed 2 to be opaque but I added an extra 

layer just because) it's an amazing red/copper/pink metallic multichrome colour. You can see a bit of tipwear but these photos were taken after 4 days of wear and there was no chipping :) I tried my best to get good photos of the colour shift, but it's much more beautiful in real life.

 

  

This is 3 coats of China Glaze Light as Air (again it only really needed 2 coats) and 1 coat of Barry M  Lavender Hexograms. I applied this one horribly, you can see a huge dent in one nail :P

And finally this is 2 coats of Sinful Colours Let's Meet, 1 coat of China Glaze Lighthouse and 1 coat of China Glaze Crackle Glaze in Fault Line. I love crackle polish, it's such a quick and lazy way to get an interesting and arty looking manicure :P

What are you wearing on your nails at the moment?

I want to start a hosiery blog because I own so so many pairs of tights and stockings and socks and never get round to wearing the vast majority of them. I thought a blog would be a good incentive for me to wear more of them. I can't think of a good punny name though, so far people have suggested:

Stocking Filler, Funny Face Lovely Legs, Tight Spot and just Lillian's Lovely Legs 

do you have any ideas? :)

Do my work for me so I don't  have to do anything crazy like make my own decisions!

Goddess of nails

Hi everyone
once again i'm sorry for not posting in a while (God this is getting to be a recurring theme!)
I've been having a bit of a stressful time at the moment. I may have mentioned a while ago that i was very happy to have got a few pieces of my work into an exhibition at a (rather highly thought of) local commercial gallery. It was due to open a few weeks ago no-one got in contact with me and because i am so shy i didn't ask and I thought i had missed the private view, which made me sad. Anyway i finally emailed them about it and recieved no reply. Then about a week ago the gallery seemed to shut down, we assumed this was because the show was being put up and i was relieved. But low, a huge 'TO LET' sign has been put up. I've emailed everyone at the gallery whose address i had but haven't got any reply.
So obviously my work won't be exhibited and while that is disappointing i don't really care now because i am just so panicked about getting my paintings back! It's terrifying that no-one will reply to me and tell me when i can pick up my stuff!
I've also been trying my hand at making gloves (ho ho ho i am making a pun) and god it's awful! The pattern is so so tricky (partly because you use just a 3mm seam allowance and partly because of the insane gusset things between the fingers) and i don't even know if they'll fit when they're finished. Grump!
Anyway that's what's been going on.

A while back Cherry Culture were having a 20% off (which actually they are again at the moment! Use code B2S20 until tuesday sadly i cannot afford to get anything) and i picked up a huge amount of nail polishes :) One of which was this:

LA colors Goddess

 

This is a lovely muted slightly nude toned gold with tiny and large silver holographic glitter.

It's lovely and i know i'll where it on it's own at some point, but I just wasn't feeling it. I needed more bling!

So i popped on a thin layer of my gold holo glitter franken and then some silver large square glitter (Essence nail twins but i don't know the name!)

 

Ta daa!! Much more tacky :)

What's on your nails at the moment?

My Franken

Here is my Franken that i posted about here worn properly :)
This was 3 coats of my franken over 1 layer of gold polish (Models Own Gold Digger) and then 2 coats of top coat.

I think it looks very nice personally! Definately good for something that cost a quid and 5 minutes to make :) It lasted about a week too!

DDAHSW OOTD and FOTD

2 weeks ago (i think... around that... god i need to get quicker at posting these!) I went to see my second favourite band ever, David Devant and His Spirit Wife (I've waxed lyrical about them before and am planning to write a post about the gig on my other blog soon if anyone's interested :) ) and got rather dolled up. As the band are named after (and used to have a vague conceit around) a magician I based my look on a sort of burlesque magicians assistant showgirl... thing :P At least that was the idea, you think i pulled it off?

 

Bustier: Vintage

Fringe shorts: Topshop

Tights: Emilio Cavallini

Shoes: Office

Necklace: Tatty Devine

 

 

Oh god can't remember what makeup i was wearing! Apart from Collection 2000 glitter eyeliner in Dig It and Mac lipstick in Lady Danger. My nails were Gosh Holographic which may be my favourite nail varnish ever (though it's the only holographic polish i have and i dare say i would love all of them) but look a the pretty!

Oddly I didn't get harassed by anyone to or from the gig, though i did make quite an impression on my friend Fred Pipes :P
Though i've been this size (well almost i think i've gained weight recently, diet failure! :P) I really am not used to my new body. I'm always shocked seeing it in photos. I'm trying my best to diet so hopefully in a few months I'll see at least a small weight loss.

My nail polish collection

So this came about second in the voting on my 'little round up' post but i decided to do this one before my 'top 5s' because i am lazy and those posts will take more effort than this one! XD

Basically i store my polish on these weird little 'shelf'' things in my room. I'm not sure what they are, maybe an odd form of picture rail? But they're just perfect for displaying all my polishes so i can see them all easily. It also saves me a lot of space because nothing else will really fit on the tiny shelves :P

I have only recently got very 'into' nail varnish having seen so many gorgeous, exciting colours and manicures on various nail blogs. The frightening thing is that i have probably bought more than half of these in the last 6 months :O

Wall of polish!: