Simple Nail Art - Barry M Lychee and Vanilla

So I've has very Christmass-y nails the past few days but it was taking up a bit too much time. I finally decided to do something simple for this week until I go all out with the sparkle next week.

Keeping it neutral I picked my favourite of the Barry M matte shades which is Vanilla and the similar gel shade of Lychee.

I used Vanilla as my base and then took my brand new dotting tool and used Lychee to place a line of large dots down the centre of the nail. I'm not the best with nail art but I love this colour combination and the matte contrast against the shine of the gel. I've had so many compliments on these and the usual question of "where did you get your nails done".

Bargain Post: Crystal Polish Sets

Now first of all I apologise in advance for going back in time with the quality of these pictures, my laptop decided to break on me so all I have is my phone.

Under stress and with tiredness affecting my brain I have however ordered a brand new pretty shiny white one which will hopefully be delivered on Friday and I can finally get the layout of this blog finished! Anyway, back to the point of this post.

I was wandering around a shop called B&M (imagine half pound shop half furniture store if you can) and stumbled upon these. Now before I go into it, these were 99p each so I'm not even going to bother discussing the packaging, for 99p I'm just glad they didn't pour it directly into my hand and ask me to carry it home myself!

These sets consist of two small bottles, one being a base colour and the other a flaky top coat in a colour to compliment. Being so cheap I picked up all 4 colour combinations that they had.

The first was a black base and a top coat of holographic and white flakes.

Before the negatives with this one I have an amazing positive, the consistency and application of the black base colour was amazing, so smooth and PERFECTLY opaque in one coat. The pictures below are just one coat of this stuff, I was pleasantly surprised as for this price I was expecting a runny 3-coater of a formula. Now the negatives, the flaky top coat is so ridiculously thick that even as someone used to glitter polishes with tricky applications I found this a nightmare to apply. Don't think I have ever come across a formula as thick as this one, it's so bad and so unlike the others I'm actually wondering if I picked up a dodgy batch. So here's the outcome after some painstaking placement attempts with these flakes!

If the formula of this top coat was better and I was able to get a better placement with the flakes I'd quite like this for winter, almost reminds me of snowfall at night.

Next they had a deep red/berry base colour with a gold holographic flaky top coat in an orange jelly.

Once again super impressed with the base colour, opaque in one coat and alone it's quite the lovely shade for Autumn. Then we have the flaky top coat, application on this one is loads better than the first one. Applied fairly evenly and very little fiddling with the placement. Once again the base colour in the following picture is just one coat.

I kinda love this one and I'm not sure why. I couldn't pick up the multiple colours from the holographic flakes but they are seriously pretty. I think this is a good little party and, dare I say, maybe even Christmas polish.

The next is a cornflower blue base colour with a bright blue holographic flaky top coat in blue jelly.

I'm repeating myself I know but once again the base colour is easily a one coater and is also a very very pretty shade for Autumn. I love blues and with the hundreds of polishes I have this colour is nothing like any of the others I have. The application on the top coat for this isn't quite as bad as the first black and white one but it's also not as easy as the berry shade, the flakes in this seem to be a lot denser than the berry shade and so messing around with the placement does get more than a bit annoying and if I'm honest it's not really worth the time.

Slightly disappointed with the top coat on this one but glad I bought it for the base colour alone. The problem with the top coat is that they look holographic in the bottle but once on the nail you really can't see it and it left me feeling very, for want of a better word, blah.

Finally we've got an olive coloured base with gold flakes. No holographic flakes in this one just pure gold.

£5 to the person who can guess what's coming next... the base colour is once again an amazing one-coater. Perfectly opaque on the first try with a smooth application. The flaky top coat on this has the best formula for me, goes on evenly and leaves quite a lot of smaller flakes of gold on the nail.

Another one that part of me loved, something about the gold flakes in this just leave it looking almost luxurious and expensive! Sure it's not the OPI 18kt top coat but it's 99p!

So the base coats are all seriously impressive especially for the price and the top coats add a little bit of fun. Nothing amazing but for 99p each I'd say I was pleasantly surprised. 

That's all for now, hopefully I'll have a new laptop within a day or two as I'm off shopping tomorrow and have a feeling there'll be a few purchases I want to share with you all.

Barry M: Crystal Glaze review

...And we're back in business!

Here goes my first post in a little while. So happy to have the time to blog again and what better way yo start than to talk about one of my favourite brands; Barry M.

Now I bought pretty much all of the new Autumn collection as soon as they were released and have used a lot of them other the last week or so but for now we're focusing on the Crystal Glaze top coat as I've been wearing this a lot and getting lots of compliments on it. It's so pretty even in the bottle it draws attention.

Like pretty much all of us beauty bloggers I first tried this over the new Barry M shade Berry Cosmo. This looked so beautiful and gives an almost oil slick effect however there won't be any pictures as we've all seen that before by now.

First off I want to talk about the application, the crystal flakes in this spread easily and evenly on one coat, there's no pesky little flakes left sticking up they lay beautifully flat and dries very quickly. When I first tried it I was amazed at how easy it was, I've tried similar products before and had pieces sticking up and hated it but this is so simple to apply and dries pretty quickly especially as you only need a single thin coat for the desired finish.

Once I'd tried this over Berry Cosmo I started to wonder which of my hundreds of other shades this would work with and so I grabbed a nail wheel and got painting. Some of the colours I picked because they were my favourites and others because I was just curious as to how it would look.

Some of them I'm not even going to show a detailed picture with as it just didn't work. As you can see above this top coat really only works well with darker colour. With pale and pastel colours it does add a somewhat pretty accent but if I'm being honest I probably wouldn't waste the product or my time by applying this over such shades.

That said I did find a couple of amazing combinations. First up is Crystal Glaze over my absolute favourite shade from Autumn last year, Barry M's Watermelon from their Gelly collection. I'd been waiting for the cooler weather to start wearing this again and once I'd seen it with Crystal Glaze over the top I was even more excited. I don't have the best camera in the world so the pictures don't quite do it justice but you can see just how beautiful all the different colours are.

You can also see in the above pictures what I was talking about over the lighter/pastel shades. Above Watermelon I tried it with Barry M's Blueberry Ice Cream which I think was from the 2011 Spring release if I remember correctly. It does look pretty but it just doesn't allow the beautiful colours of this top coat to show as much as the darker shades do.

So that's Crystal Glaze making one of my favourite shades even better, so imagine how excited I was when I tried it over another favourite shade and it look amazing! This time was another Gelly but this time from this years Summer release, Blue Grape. I was always planning on bringing this shade through Autumn with me and now it'll be on those tips even more with this Crystal Glaze adding to it's amazing-ness.

Blue Grape is juuuuust dark enough to allow the multiple colours in this coat to really be shown off. Again, not the best picture quality but sadly until I win the lottery or marry rich this is the best I can do haha.

I hope this gives you an idea of how to best use this top coat and if you've found any other good combinations for this please leave it in the comments so I can try it out :)

Barry M Autumn Release and Strawberry Waves Rollers

Just a quick one today for the new Barry M collection. Popped straight into Superdrug after work today to get the new polishes, At first I grabbed them all, then I thought about it for a second and decided I should see how I like these ones first.

So after my sensible side kicked in I decided to get two of the matte collection and went with Espresso,  because you can't go wrong with black, and Vanilla because from the swatches I've seen so far this is one of my favourites. I also got two of the textured glitters in Lady, because I look at it and all I see is Christmas, and Princess, because this really is a Princess shade.

They also had an offer on where if you spend £9 or more you receive a free Lash Vegas mascara. I wasn't looking for this mascara and I'd have preferred a 3 for 2 offer but hey-ho, can't turn down free beauty products.

No time for a full review just yet but I'm excited to try all of it!

Also last night I finally got round to trying my cute strawberry rollers from the last post and seriously, I would suggest everyone go out and buy them!! They're actually amazing, I'm so glad I tried them before I spent money on expensive curling tongs like I was about to. They were so comfortable to sleep in and made my hair look amazing! My manager thought I'd been and had my hair done that's how good it looked, and I am not someone who is good with hair. I was running late so sadly didn't have time to take a picture but I used quite thick pieces of hair as I wanted waves rather than curls and it gave me the perfect waves,  so bouncy and natural looking and without any product on it it lasted pretty much the whole day, we're talking 12 hours before there was a noticeable difference and even then it still looked good just not as bouncy, I'm sure next time when I have the time to style properly they will last ages! So they don't use heat so don't damage your hair, they leave hair with an amazing natural looking curl, are comfortable to sleep in and more importantly they're as cute as this

These rollers are so cheap on eBay for very very cheap. I have very long thick hair and I only needed a pack of 12 to get my wavy result, you would maybe need 18 if you want super curly hair from these though :)

PS. Don't forget to check out the competition from MRP to win clothing, I've had a look at the site and they actually have some nice stuff. Click here to enter.

Countdown: Top 10 Barry M Nail Polish (for now)

Well today has been a long and interesting day! Before I settle down to watch Breaking Bad though I have a quick post for you all.

I was slightly inspired to do this today whilst at work. My nail colour changes almost daily and 99% of the time it's good old Bazza on my nails. Today was no different and the compliments from people and questions about which polish I was wearing got me thinking about my favourite Barry M polishes. And here they are

Bit of a mixture, you can tell I'm ready to move into Autumn but not quite ready to leave Summer behind!! 

So here goes my top 10 (for now, this could easily change within a week especially with the new Autumn collections releasing next week). These aren't in any order these are just the 10 I find myself wearing the most.

1) Copper

This polish is part of the reason I'm happy for the season change, I'm happy to wear brights in winter but wouldn't feel right about wearing this in the London sunshine. This is what's on my nails today so I guess the inspiration behind the post! This is THE most beautiful copper shade I've ever seen, it's hard to describe but the simplest description would be the most perfect copper shade with loads and loads of tiny gold and copper glitter particles. It's amazing and not once have I worn this and not had someone comment on its amazingness!

2) Berry Ice Cream

Here comes the girly side! This is here purely because I think its such a pretty colour. It's the perfect lilac and personally, even though this was brought out as part of the Ice Cream summer collection I really think it can be worn all year. Now here's where my love for this shade gets a really weird description! When I wear this shade it just reminds me of Nicki Minaj's Super Bass video (don't judge me lol). I'm a huge Nicki fan and this colour is just so girly and sweet I can't not love it. It doesn't draw as much attention as other shades I've chosen but it makes me happy everytime.

3) Magenta Glitter

I'm a Barbie Girl, in a Barbie world! That's my best description for this shade! It's loud and bright and in your face and glittery and very very PINK!! This may be a slightly controversial choice, I know not everyone is a fan of glitter and I know that nobody is a fan of the removal, but this shade to me is perfection. Like Copper this shade attracts a lot of attention and there's nothing I like more than striking up a conversation with a stranger about nails!

I don't want this too picture heavy so I had to go ahead and use the nail wheel

4) Greenberry

The first but definitely not the last Gelly on the list. The Gelly collection might just be the best thing Barry M ever released, I've yet to find a fault with any of the polishes from this collection! This one is a bright greeny turquoise colour, yet another attention grabber! Admittedly it is more suited to the warmer months but I've been known to wear lime green polish in December, I think nails is the one place we can express our bright side whatever the weather!

5) Lychee

I'm not a neutral kinda girl by any means, I love bright and girly. I saw this when it was released as part of the spring Gelly collection and if I'm being honest picked it up in a rush because I needed a third one for the 3 for 2 offer. As soon as I tried it though I loved it!! It's just so classy and simple and I've yet to find a neutral shade that comes anywhere close to this. And to find such a light colour that is this quick and easy to apply in just two coats is a rarity. Beautiful colour and will easily last throughout autumn even if it was a spring release.

6) Blue Moon

Another spring collection polish on the list but I believe this was a 2012 release. There's nothing truly amazing about this when you first look, it's a lovely pale blue colour with a tiny hint of green. I fell in love with this when I first got the bottle home though! It has the prettiest blue shimmer running through it, it's very subtle but very beautiful! I call this my mermaid shade!

7) Dusky Mauve

Another shade that gets me excited for Autumn. I know this was all over the blogs when it was first released because of the comparisons with the Chanel shade Paradoxal. It was actually a blog post on this comparison that made me buy it. In the daylight this looks amazing, as the name suggests its a lovely mauve colour but when that sunlight hits it its like magic, stunning purple shimmer! Cannot recommend this one enough.

8) Guava

We're back to brights for the final three. All of them are from the Summer 2013 Gelly collection. Guava is a very bright, very shiny turquoise. The reason this is on here is simple, I love bright colours especially ones that are as easy to apply as this one! Summer shade or not I plan on wearing this for a few months to come!

9) Passionfruit

Originally I bought this one simply to complete the summer collection, I didn't particularly want it from what I saw but I can't not have every new release, it's like an addiction. This so quickly became my favourite shade though. It's a reddy pinky orange, it's super duper bright and has possibly the best application out of all the summer Gelly collection. I adore this shade and so does everyone else whenever I wear it ( I even had to take it into work to paint a colleagues nails lol).

10) Blue Grape

And last but certainly not least we have this little beauty. The royal blue I had been searching for for what seemed like an eternity. Before this shade every royal blue colour I tried was so much darker once applied, I already had a navy blue! They were never what I was looking for. Then along came this, bright and shiny and opaque within two coats. This was my definition of royal blue heaven. It was bright enough for summer but this is the most versatile shade out of them all, I'll be running this bottle dry before the years out.

So that's my favourite Barry M shades, now I'd love to hear yours :)

Sunday Solutions: Nail Polish Storage

Afternoon my lovelies!

I was going to do a nail art post today but it's Sunday, the day of rest. Now as much as I love to do my nails I don't love it quite as much as chocolate and The X Factor which is what I have spent a lot of my Sunday with.

That said any nail enthusiasts out there will still find this mini post useful I hope. With well over 100 nail polishes my vanity table was looking like the sale shelves in Superdrug, just a mass of unorganised bottles of all shapes and sizes. I finally decided to do something about it and so I took to trusty old eBay to find a solution. I searched and searched and there was a few things here and there until this baby jumped out at me

It's so shiny and pretty and pink!! Now I'm sure you can tell from the blog layout and the blog name; I love all things girly and bright so this lifesaver was ideal got me! Within about 30 seconds of seeing it I'd pressed that Commit to Buy button and the sale was complete. Now I just had to wait for delivery (I got it delivered to my workplace so I didn't have to wait, that's how excited I was)!

Now as I said, well over 100 nail polishes so obviously this wasn't going to hold them all but it does hold 33 bottles which is a pretty decent amount (that's Barry M sized bottles as well over half my collection are Barry M products). As soon as it was delivered I rushed home to fill it up and now it takes pride of place on my vanity table!

I have another one ordered and no doubt will be ordering another after that. I can't explain how much I love this, I feel like I have my own little nail salon in my bedroom!

The Pink Acrylic Nail Stand is from eBay user esd-ltd2009 and is the bargain price of £12.99! 

Hope you're all having a lovely weekend and if you have any storage solutions of your own let me know :)