Spotted : Barry M Glitteratti !

Barry M Glitteratti polishes have arrived! What's even better is that they are currently 3 for 2 in Boots :-) well it seemed rude not too...these look perfect for the party season but I'll definitely be breaking out the peel off base coat for these!

Have you tried any of these yet? What's your favorite? In the bottle I'm loving the purple Fashion Icon. Can't wait to try these out!

"Dusky Mauve" by Barry M (Chanel Paradoxal dupe)

Hello ladies!  Today's mani is a lovely little nude - "Dusky Mauve" by Barry M.  I have only very recently started venturing into nuddy territory.  I mean, in a world where you can make your nails purple, why the hell would you choose to make them beige?  But recently I have seen the error of my ways and started branching out.  I feel like a proper grown up now.  Dusky Mauve is a lovely warm grey-toned wet clay sort of colour...I'm afraid I don't have any good adjectives for 'sort of grey brown with a dash of purple'.  I'll have to work on that.  But whatever colour this is it's jolly nice.

Barry M "Dusky Mauve" - artificial light

I'm wearing two coats sandwiched betwixt NE base and HK Girl topcoat.  Application was fine, about what you'd expect, but the silly skinny brush you get on the BM polishes is a pain to use.  Quality wise I'm afraid you get what you pay for with this polish.  I had tip wear almost by the time I'd finished painting my nails, so long lasting it ain't.  But for <£3 its still a helluva deal.  I'm a big fan of Barry M, and this is going to be one of my favourites I think.

Look at that amazeballs lilac shimmer in the bottle...isn't it lovely?  The sad thing is that it stays in the bottle.  There is the barest hint of purple-ness on the nail, but not shimmery, and only if you squint at it very carefully in just the right light and really believe that it's there.  Yes it's one of those.

I bought this polish having seen my friend wearing Chanel Paradoxal.  I'm not Rockafella, so I went looking online for a dupe and found this Barry M.  Now online swatches do seem to suggest that this BM and the Chanel are exact dupes, I'm not so sure.  I thought the Paradoxal in person had more of an evident purple shimmer, but other bloggers seem to suggest it's the other way round. 

Well, regardless, I think that this is a gorgeous and sophisticated colour and you'd have to be mental to spend £18 instead of £3.  I mean, think of how many polishes you could buy with your £15 change.  The change would get you a Deborah Lippmann polish...(or 3 if you go to TK Maxx!).  So it's not contest.  I'm sure the Chanel would last a lot longer, but I tend to change my polish almost as often as my socks so wear time really isn't a problem. 

I got my bottle of Dusky Mauve for £2.90 from Nail Polish Direct (link in suppliers page).  For some reason it seems this one is rarely in store, perhaps its and older polish, but it is easily available online.

Flakie Comparisons: New Barry M 'Crystal Glaze' and others

Today I have a picture heavy flakie comparison post for you.  In recent weeks I've picked up three new flakies and was keen to see how these compare to polishes I already have.  My new polishes include brand new shades from Barry M ("Crystal Glaze"),  Color Club ("The Uptown") and No.7 ("In the Stars").  The No.7 is a polish I've seen described as a 'microflakie', sporting ultra fine iridescent particles that I think you could also consider to be a soft duochrome glitter.  I have divided this comparison into traditional sized flakies (the 'macroflakies') and the fine glitter sized particle polishes (the 'microflakies').

So, onto the comparison, here is the line-up:

The 'Macroflakies'
(L-R) Barry M "Crystal Glaze, Essie "Shine of the Times", Color Club "The Uptown", Layla "The Butterfly Effect (52)"

The 'Microflakies'
(L-R) No. 7 "In the Stars", Color Club "Pearl-spective"

The first observation to make with all of these, is that the colour in the bottle is completely different to the colour on the nail! For these swatches I've layered each macroflakie atop No.7 "Just Black".  With the exception of the Barry M polish (two coats) these are a single coat of the flakie to give you an idea of the density of flakie bits...


L-R: Crystal Glaze, SOTT, The Uptown, Butterfly Effect - Natural light

(L) Barry M Crystal Glaze (R) Essie SOTT - macro shot

Immediately we can see that the tone of the colour shift on the Barry M offering is completely different to the other three, which are all similar to each other.  Despite looking positively pink in the bottle, the Barry M flakie comes through in shades of blue, aqua and almost clear pieces.  One thing I wasn't keen on was the clear/pale flakie particles on first appearance look like missed patches on the nail so at first I thought I'd smudged the polish.  The density of particles in the Barry M polish is also much less than the others - roughly half. 

Comparing the 'red toned' macroflakies - of these it seems that on a black base, Essie SOTT and Color Club The Uptown are close enough to be dupes.  The Layla "Butterfly Effect" is very similar, just a little more red toned.  This can be seen more clearly in the photo below, which was taken in direct sunlight...



L-R: Crystal Glaze, SOTT, The Uptown, Butterfly Effect - Sun light

In bottle, the Color Club and Layla polishes look like dupes.  So I also compared these on their own, with no base colour.  Shown here are three coats of each:



L-R: Color Club "The Uptown" and Layla "Butterfly Effect" - Sun light

Despite the intense in-bottle indigo colour, both of these are really watery and thin on their own.  There is still considerable VNL with three coats, so it would take a hell of a lot to become fully opaque.  It's less obvious in this picture, but the Layla polish is slightly darker toned, and slightly more opaque than the Color Club.

Now onto the microflakies! For comparison I have the new No.7 shade "In the Stars" and Color Club's "Pearl-spective" from their recent Kaleidoscope collection.



L-R: Color Club "Pearl-spective" and No. 7 "In the Stars"

Both microflakie shades are gorgeous layered on black. Shown here is one coat of each.  Again the in-bottle colour is nothing like the on-nail colour and these two shades are far from dupes - in fact they are sort of mirror-images of each other.  The No.7 appears predominantly blue and has a subtle shift through aqua to pink.  The Color Club looks predominantly pink, with a subtle shift through purple to blue.  Both very pretty and worth owning both I think.  I found some excellent pics of the No.7 layered over blue and on its own here.  There is also an excellent review of Pearl-spective here, which again shows swatches over different base colours.  It looks as though the shift is highly dependent on base colour, so this is something I'll play with at some point. These microflakies remind me of the Ozotic 'Sugar' polishes from the 900 series (great review here), although I don't have any of those for comparison.

Phew! So the final comparison is price...Macroflakies: I bought the Barry M with my Boots points (hurrah!) and the RRP is £3.99.  The Essie and Layla polishes I bought from Amazon sellers for £8.04 and £5.94 respectively with free P&P.  The Colour Club was part of a duo-set in TK Maxx for £3.99, so effectively £2.  The Microflakies: I bought the No.7 with one of those handy £3 off vouchers Boots sometimes hand out, RRP is £6 so I got it for £3.  The Colour Club was part of a 4-polish mini-set in TK Maxx for £3.99 so effectively cost £1.  Full size Color Club polishes are available for about £8 if you can find them, and occasionally TK Maxx has 8 polish sets for £8-£10 which is a frickin steal.

Recommendations: If you own none of these, and want to, then I would recommend the No.7 micro-flakie "In the Stars" since this is easy to find, super pretty, and potentially the cheapest if you get one of those voucher offers.  For the macroflakies I'd recommend the Layla polish "The Butterfly Effect" (Ceramic Effects No. 52).  It's the cheapest, and so similar to the other shades that it makes no difference really which you pick. 



Bargains and Nail News


Hello again mani-maniacs.  Exciting news for UK based NP addicts like me - TK Maxx has stepped up in the awesomeness stakes - they now stock Deborah Lippmann polishes! I picked up a pack of 3 for £15. FIFTEEN QUID!  That's literally 3 for the price of 1.  In my pack I got "Bitches Brew" (a Chanel "Malice" dupe, comparison here), "Don't Tell Mama" (a sumptuous emerald/jade shimmer, apparently similar to Illamasqua "Veridian" which I've been lemming for ages), and "Wicked Game" (a silver/green/pink duochrome similar but not a dupe for this season's hot shade - Essie "The Twill of It" and OPI "Peace Love and OPI", comparison here).  Swatches to follow in due course.  This is the first time I've seen Lippmann polishes for sale anywhere else except House of Fraser/Jenners so fingers crossed we'll be seeing more of these in TK Maxx.




Deborah Lippmann polishes are now at TK Maxx

Also spotted at TK Maxx were pack of 5 Essie polishes for £10.  That's just redonkulous compared to the £8 pricetag for a single polish in Boots.  Sadly the sets they had all contained polishes I already own, and I'm crazy but I'm not that crazy.

There was also a lot of Color Club and Barielle shades.  The Color Club offering included the current season (Fall) Girl About Town polishes, £4.  I picked up the duo below of "The Uptown" and "Williamsburg".



Color Club Fall 2013 - Williamsburg (left) and The Uptown (right)

"The Uptown" is a gorgeous indigo-based flakie polish that certainly looks similar in bottle to Layla Ceramic effect 52 (which is a dupe for Nfu Oh 51), so expect comparison swatches of these at some point.

On the topic of flakies, the Barry M flakie "Crystal Ball" will be released this week (review here). It will be released in Superdrug on the 25th of September, and in Boots from October 2nd and is set to retail for a bargain-a-licious £3.99.

Finally, I'm super excited about the upcoming launch of Rainbow Connection UK. This is a new UK-based online nail shop that starts trading at 8pm tonight (22/09/13) and will be selling indie polishes that were previously unavailable in the UK without paying mental P&P charges.  On launch there will be polishes from Liquid Sky Lacquers, Cadillacquer, Crows Toes and pre-orders for KPT polish. As if that all wasn't exciting enough there's a 10% off opening offer on all orders, just use the code OPEN until 6th October.  I can't wait! Keeping my fingers and toes crossed that I can snap up a couple of Crows Toes polishes that I've been lusting after from afar....

So that's it ladies.  This week's top tip is to shimmy on down to TK Maxx if you have one - certainly the Edinburgh stores have just had big stock-drops of bargain polish and these things never last!

 Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated to any of the stores or blogs that I post links to or mention.

Plum Gelly

"Plum" is my first experience of the Gelly Hi Shine line by Barry M and I absolutely love it.  It's a beautiful and sophisticated shade of dusky aubergine/eggplant (depending on which side of the pond you're from) that's perfect for autumn. 



Barry M Gelly Hi Shine  - "Plum" - Natural Light

I never thought I'd go without my beloved Seche, but the pics here are both with NO TOPCOAT.  So this definitely lives up to its 'Hi-Shine' billing!  I guess the 'Gelly' element is a reference to its shiny gel nails type finish, because I'd definitely class this as a crème polish.  Opacity is very good, I'm wearing two coats in these pictures but you could get away with a single coat.  Formula is excellent, smooth and self-levels well, what's more to say? Love, love, love!





Barry M Gelly Hi Shine  - "Plum" - Natural Light

Well there is one more thing to say - this is ridiculously good value at £3.99.  I even picked mine up in Boots in a 'Buy 1 get 1 1/2 price' offer (which incidentally is on again right now!).  I have polishes 3 times this price that aren't even half this good.  I'd highly recommend this.