Barry M Nail Effects Royal Glitter in "Countess"

If there is one thing I am always hankering after when it comes to Christmas...it's a glitter nail varnish.  There's just something about this time of year that makes me want everything to be sparkly, and this includes my nails.

Having said that, I've never got on well with glitter nail varnishes.  For a start, I don't have the nicest nails, nor the nicest skin on my hands (generally a bit dry and wrinkly) and I do honestly think that any nail effect varnishes (e.g. matte, glitter, leather, textured) only really work on good nails (with a nice big nail plate) and good skin. 

This doesn't mean that people like me, with wrinkly hands and small nails, can't dabble in a bit of festive glitter fun - it just means you need to get the right nail varnish.

My biggest issue with glitter nail varnishes, is sparse glitter.  The type that look mega glittery in the bottle, then when you apply them it is just clear polish with three strands of glitter that you end of wiping around your nail. I've tried stippling, and putting on 15 layers, but these glitter nail varnishes never work for me.  I want dense glitter.  Proper mega disco-ball sparkle.  And in my experience, going high end doesn't mean you get a denser glitter.  I've used Revlon, Essie, OPI and Nails Inc varnishes which have all given me the three-strand-glitter effect.

I was in Next the other day, and the girl who served me had amazing rose-coloured glitter nails, and it definitely made me think 'right, it's time to hunt for a good glitter nail varnish', and for once I actually went and did some research.

Which led me to my purchase of today......Barry M's new nail effects "Royal Glitter" polish in the shade, 'Countess'.

At £3.99, this nail varnish is a lovely little bargain, and no one ever wants to spend loads on season-specific cosmetics.  And it really does pack on the glitter.  These are my nails after two basic coats of my polish...

 

Sorry the photos are a bit blurry, but my camera seemed a bit overwhelmed by the glitter and kept trying to focus all over the place.

 

You can get the jist of how dense the glitter is though.  The colour is a purple-brown and the glitter is a mix of gold and purple-pink.  The glitter is really, really fine and it does look like you've painted your nails with a normal burgundy type nail varnish and then gone over the top with mega fine, dull gold/purple glitter. I like this though, because if you actually had of done that it would have taken ages both to apply and dry.

 

The only thing I wasn't keen on about this, was that it is completely matte and when it is on your nails it feels like sandpaper.  I did put a coat of clear nail varnish on top and it made it more glossy for a few minutes, and then it sucked the clear in and went back to being mega matte again.  The photos below are immediately after I put the top coat on, but the finish went back to being completely matte and rough-feeling about 5 minutes later.












 

Overall I did really like this nail varnish.  It applies so easily, is a nice festive winter shade, and it is definitely one of the most hassle-free glitter polishes I've used.  And all for £3.99...not bad.

The finish frustrates me though, as regular followers of my blog know I'm a massive fan of a glossy nail.  I also think the matte finish means you don't get much "twinkle" from the glitter.  You can see it is a glitter nail varnish, but it is more of a dull glitter than a mega sparkle.  Barry M do 4 other shades in this range ... a rose gold, a pink, a white and a gold....and the rose gold (Duchess) looked like it had a lot more sparkle so I might try this when we get closer to Christmas. 

If you've got any recommendations for a mega-glittery nail varnish then please let me know, as I am definitely still on the hunt and the festive season is getting closer!!!  I especially want a proper bright sparkly red, or a dense sparkly gold.  So any tips, leave them in the comments below!  xx

Birthday times for the boy!

Bit of a random post, but screw it, I wanted to share my little achievement with the world..!

It was my other half's 30th birthday at the weekend, and home-made birthday cakes have been a bit of a tradition in my family for years.  My Mum started it with a cake decorating course when we were babies, and since then we've had ferrero rocher cakes, cinderella barbie cakes, minnie mouse cakes, cosmetics cakes, a Vogue magazine cover, and a sinking Titanic made completely of cake (to name just a few).

So for my boyfriend's big birthday I thought I'd bring him into the family tradition and do him a cheeky little cake.  I had a look online (bearing in mind he is a bit of a Haribo fan) and I found the perfect cake.

Right...you know when you have an idea...and it seems a reaaallllyyy good idea?  And you think "that'll be pretty quick and simple".

Then 2 and a half hours and 2 kilograms of gummy bears later...this happens:

God bless my Mum for helping me out (she did the "3" and I did the "0") otherwise I may have been there ALL night.  We went through 2 tubs of Haribo Goldbears, and a lot of tedious boredom.  Each bear was stuck on using edible glue, and aside from a few gummy-bear landslides, they generally stuck really well.

If any (crazy people) are looking to recreate it, I hired the number cake tins from my local cake decorating shop at £1.50 a day.  The cake was a normal sponge that we covered in Regalice icing.  The gummy bears were then literally just stuck on with edible glue.  Bit of a tip (which is probably common sense to most people, but it took me and Mum a while to realise...) when you are doing the sides, start lining the bears up on the bottom layer first, as they stand on the board and this holds them up.  Then when you do the next layers above, the gummy bears stand on top of the gummy bear row below.  This just keeps everything in place whilst the glue sets.

It wasn't a tricky cake to make.  It just took TIME.  But I'd say do what we did...stick the X Factor on the tv, pour a glass of wine, and get gummy bear sticking!!

No.7 Gel-Look Shine in Deep Wine

It fills me with the greatest of joy to see that No.7 have brought back their Gel-Look Shine nail colours again!  I only discovered these were limited edition recently, when I casually went in to Boots to buy another one of their shades.  I was distressingly advised by the lady on the No.7 counter that they were limited edition, and they no longer did them!!  SUCH disappointment on my part.

But they're back!!  I went into Boots yesterday and there they were, chilling on a promo stand.  Such joy.

From what I can tell, No.7 have pretty much re-launched the exact same colour range as before.  My lovely Neptune colour was there, as was the barbie pink and the pale pink and the random turquoise-green type colour.  I thought they might "winter" the range up a bit but apparently not.  But they did have this gorgeous deep wine colour called...erm..."deep wine" and I just had to purchase it.

And I'll be honest, I am a little in love with this colour.  For some reason I'm just not feeling my reallllyyy mega dark colours yet (e.g. OPI Lincoln Park After Dark) and have been hankering after a happy medium between bright reds and dark, dark burgundies that look black.  And voila! Here it is! In that deep-rich-shiny-pigmented nail varnish that No.7's gel range does so well.

This applies like a dream.  You have to kind of trust the brush a bit.  Press down, let it fan out to fill your nail, and swipe.  Job done.  It does say you can get away with one coa, but naa I don't agree.  This is a 2-coater and if you don't two-coat then you're not getting its full gorgeousness.  It also dries really quickly for such a thick nail varnish, which is a bonus.

 The colour is a rich purple-blackberry-juice type burgundy...more purple based than red....and it is a really flattering shade against my pale little winter-skinned hands.  It goes on quite dark but still with a nice amount of colour, especially when in natural light, when it looks a lot ligher and redder. It certainly doesn't look like it is verging on black, like a lot of dark burgundy/purple shades tend to do.  It is such a luxurious colour and just screams Christmas parties or wrapped around a mug of mulled wine.  It's got me quite excited. 



In natural light (sorry about the rubbish quality, I was walking at the time!)

In artificial light















But get in there NOW before No.7 decide to do something silly and discontinue them again (I like to think their reappearance had something to do with my distressed reaction at their discontinuation).  It dries to a really good shine and has such good depth of colour - I think it looks a lot more expensive than it actually is.  I'm definitely buying a second bottle...damnit maybe even a third.