Barry M Nail Effects Crackle

Hello! I’ve been busy with my lectures for a couple of days, now I have the rest of the week to work at home. :) I said I wouldn’t buy any more polish till I had tried my un-loved-un-tried ones, but I had to get this one and show you all as I think it is pretty cool. It is a bit gimmicky, but what the hey! I like gimmicks! :)

This is the new Barry M Nail Effects matte black crackle polish (long name!) over Ciate Dangerous Affair (free with November Marie Claire). I love this effect. I wasn’t sure at first, the randomness and unpredictability of the crackle effect was putting me off. However, now I’ve seen it, I love it. I think my love for it will be dependent on the colour combos being used, but red and black, I <3!

I really like the black matte, I tested a thumb (bottom corner of second picture) with a gloss topcoat, but it didn’t look as good. I think the red looks like lava and the matte black could be burnt ground. I quite like that. Even when you watch the effect happen it kinda looks like the burnt earth splitting and lava coming through. I’m easily entertained.

I apologise for the cuticle smudges, but I painted these while trying to haphazardly paint and film myself, with only a phone and a box. So the cuticles aren’t as neat as they could be! However, I did get some fab videos of how I applied the polish to get this effect and how long the polish took to crack (see below). The polish takes less than a minute to dry. Once it’s finished cracking, it’s dry. I took a shower right afterwards and they looked just as good when I got out as when I had just painted them.

Barry M say you should not overlap the colour, but I think this is more advice than a rule. I think it means that once the bit you’ve done starts to dry and crack you shouldn’t go over it again, as it will not look as good. If your quick and just painting your nails normally with a little overlap it still works fine. The warning of no overlapping had me mess up my first nail (the thumb that I put the gloss topcoat on, see thumb in picture above), it went really crackly and looked a bit rubbish. I was too slow and too careful I think. Whereas on my other fingers I just painted as I would normally and they looked far better, more blocky, which I prefer. It also took me less time to do and just felt a lot easier without worrying about this overlapping business.

Anyway, here are some videos of me using the Barry M nail effects polish. Now…this was shot with HTC Desire, it was on a shoe box with the lens hanging over and I just painted my nails under it. It’s a bit MacGyver, but it did the job ok, apart from the being able to see the shoebox on the right hand side of the screen, ignore that! :P Speaking of gimmicks, what do you think of videos in blogs like this? Are they useful or just taking up space?

The first video shows me disregarding the Barry M overlapping suggestion as I didn’t have enough polish on the brush on the first go.

Lastly, in ‘Goldilocks and the three bears’ style, this one seemed juuuuust right. Enough polish on the brush to cover my nail in one go and not too messy.

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