Review of 'Instant Nail Effects Crackle' in 'Black Magic'

Hi everyone! So I thought I would try a new thing out on my nails! I got this crackle effect last Chirstmas but I always thought it looked a bit tacky (I still do if you match it with the wrong colour) so I haven't actually tried it until now. I think you can buy it for £3.99 which is the average price for any effect nail varnish Barry M has.

I have been loving the rockish look lately of mixing black with gold and I really wanted to see if I could apply this to my nails. First I painted my nails gold (which I wrote about HERE) which acted as my base colour. On it's own, I'm not too sure about having full gold nails so I probably wouldn't use it without placing some sort of effect over the top.

I then applied the first coat of the crackle effect whilst the gold was still drying (I'd left it about 5-10 minutes but it was still a little tacky). I wasn't quite sure if I should be applying it with a thin coat or a thick. The first nail I did, I painted a very thin coat on, but then found I needed more polish to cover the whole nail. However, by the time I had got some more on the brush the thin strip had already began to crack. So, my advice would be to make sure you have plenty of varnish on your brush and just paint a slightly thick coat over the top of your chosen base colour.

The cracking started almost instantly and it only took about 1 minute for the whole thing to be done. I continued painting all my nails until my whole hand was done.

I like that the crackle is random so every nail is different, but I found, especially with my pinky, that the crackle had basically split into 4 sections. Personally, I think this works best when there are lots of thin cracks all over the nail.

I then added a top coat to give it a lovely shine as the crackle is kind of matt. I LOVE how my nails look as I think it is quite edgy and something different than just a plain colour. I've received quite a few compliments on my nails this week because of it (including a couple from some guys!). I think it works really well with the gold as a base colour, but you definitely have to be careful what you use as a base colour because obviously some will look great and some will just look plain tacky.

I would recommend this product as I think it livens up your nails and although I haven't tried the other colours (I think I'm right in saying you can also get it in purple, pink, blue, white and gold?) I think that black is probably the best colour to get, as in theory it will go with a wider variety of base colours!

Let me know what you think of the crackle effect! Thank you for reading! (:

Review of 'NYC Quick Dry Nail Polish' in 'Full Metal Jacket'

Hi everyone! I bought this nail varnish when I went through the phase of buying nail varnishes from NYC as they were on a 3 for 2 deal and are only £1.79 each anyway. I had picked it up with the intention of using it at Christmas to jazz up my nails, but I thought I would give it a little test now!

It's a very strong gold metallic colour and I wasn't too sure about wearing it as I think sometimes it looks a little bit tacky when people have gold nails. I don't really like gold anything to be honest - most of my jewellery is silver. I think this dislike of gold has come from seeing pirates in films and cartoons with gold teeth.

I applied my base coat, which some of you may have noticed is not my usual Barry M, but in fact my old Collection one! This is basically because I couldn't find my Barry M one when I was painting my nails (although I've found it since).

I then applied the first coat of colour and was pleasantly surprised! With only one coat my nail was fully covered without the usual streaky appearance that lots of the nail varnishes from NYC seem to have. You could definitely get away with only applying this one coat, but I wanted to apply a second more to protect the nail varnish from chipping!

So the second coat made very little difference to the colour, which is great as it proves you can get away with only applying one coat of colour!

I didn't apply a top coat as I wanted to test out something on top of it which you will be able to read about in a few days time!

I love how well this nail varnish goes on and how your nail colour looks the same as the bottle after one coat, but I'm still not sold on the idea of having purely gold nails. If you like having metallic nails then I would, without a doubt, recommend you get this as it is one of the best ones from the NYC collection. If you have never tried metallic nails then this would the perfect one to try out because even if you don't like it you won't have spent a huge amount on it.

Do you like metallic nails or have you never tried them? Let me know! Keep an eye out for what I tried next with this look and thanks for reading! (: