Review of 'NYC Rock Muse Smoky Top Coat' in 'Green Day'

Hi everyone! So I was in my local Superdrug and I just had to walk past the NYC stand and I saw they had these new Rock Muse Smoky Top Coats. Now I'm not sure if they are new, or if my local store has only just got them in? Anyway they kind of looked like the Revlon Moon Candy nail varnish which I really wanted to try it out but they are around £7, but rumour is, Barry M is releasing something very similar to it but hopefully half the price! Anywho, as usual it was only £1.99 so I thought I would give it a go!

I've been loving dark, rocky-ish colours on my nails recently so I picked up the black which has green sequins and bits of glitter in, hence the name Green Day! I quite like the rock themed names but I did have a bit of a stuggle finding swatches of it online as googling: Rock, Muse and Green Day, didn't really give me what I was looking for!

I first applied my base coat which is my Barry M one (I found it again!) and I did two coats because I was using black as my base and I really didn't want it to stain my nails.

I then applied my first coat of my base colour. I decided to go for a black, also from the NYC collection, as the smokey top coat although appears dead black in the bottle, but if you apply it straight on your nail it's a very pale and watery black. I think my nails were good to go after one coat of the base colour but

on the odd nail it was a little thin.

I then applied my second coat of the black base colour just to have a really deep black. It seemed to dry pretty quickly and was very glossy which is a huge bonus for me!

I then applied the first coat of the 'Smoky Top Coat' and to be honest I was a little disappointed. Don't get me wrong - it does look really cool! But it wasn't anything like the Moon Candy ones which is what I thought it would be like but I guess I can't blame them for that as they never advertised it as an alternative to it! It is basically the same as a glitter coat.

I don't think NYC is great for glitter nail varnishes as the spread of large bits of glitter and small bits of glitter isn't very even! But I think this is one of the best ones I have tried just because of how the green really stands out against the black when the light hits it! For this reason, I would definitely recommend you check it out!

I didn't apply a top coat as this polish is labelled as a top coat! I just cleaned up all the stray polish and they were done!

I really like how it turned out even if it wasn't like I expected it to be! I think I might go back and have a look what other colours they do that might be more suitable to wearing any time! As much as I like it I think the effect of green and black is quite Halloweeny for me as I don't usually wear stuff like this! Let me know what you think of this more rocky look - would you try it out? Thanks for reading!

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! (: