Barry M Nail Art Pens

I’m super excited for today’s blog post, I have fallen in love with this product from the moment I first saw the press release to the moment I used them on my own nails: Barry M Nail Art Pens.

If you have ever used the squeezy nail art pens which are abundant in today’s market (for example, from Rio Beauty, Models Own, and various lesser-known brands) you will know that the flow of the ink/polish is quite hard to control mid-design: squeeze too much, and you are rewarded with a large splodge of polish all over your neat design; squeeze too little and you end up scratching your design into the base colour. It’s a little finicky. Enter Barry M Nail Art Pens. Now I know they aren’t the first brand to be using this design of pen, Finishing Touches by Superdrug have been using it for a while but to be honest I’ve never tried them (I have made a mental note to buy them for comparison asap!) and I know other brands such as Topshop have also used a similar pen design but you all know how much I love my Barry M, so of course I’m excited!

The base colours I used for my nail art are Rimmel Black Cab, Barry M Dragon Fruit Gelly and Barry M Green Berry Gelly 🙂

The pen itself is about 1cm taller than a Revlon or OPI bottle. They are a nice easy shape and size for storage or for carrying around, and there is no worry of it exploding at the bottom of your handbag. The packaging is the exact colour of the ink (I’m going to call it ink for now to save confusion!) which is always a bonus. The nib is a lot like that of Berol Handwriting Pens (which were always the colouring-in pens in my secondary school – yes, colouring-in pens in secondary school!).

The instructions on the back are as follows:

1. Shake well with the lid on.

2. Pump down on the tip until Paint appears.

3. Get creative!

4. Don’t forget your topcoat.

When it says ‘pump down on the tip’ it literally means you need to hold the pen vertically on a piece of scrap paper, pump it up and down (quite a lot of times, don’t worry if it doesn’t come out for a while!) until the nib is entirely covered by the colour of the ink. When you first open the pen the nib is pure white; when you have enough ink on the nib it will look like those in the photos above. Don’t worry if the ink doesn’t come out the second, third, fourth (and so on…) times that you use the pen, you need to do the pumping action (lol) every time you use it.

The ink flows freely, but not uncontrollably, which solves my problems with the squeezy nail art pens, as you can see I have almost managed entire straight lines on my nails with no random splodging along the way. The ink is very opaque, and a second coat of the ink covers any bald or sheer patches (such as on my index nail, I left it at one coat to demonstrate this).

I did make a mistake or two, and discovered that the wet ink is easily rubbed off with facial wipes, so always remember your topcoat!

Finally, when I was applying my nail art, I did notice that if I left any of the pens on their side or upside down, the ink would gather around the nib leaving a big blob on my nail, so just be careful to always store them upright.

Hope this answers any of your questions about the nail art pens, I for one am totally taken and I am hoping that Barry M will release more colours in the future! I feel like they have put a lot of effort into perfecting these whereas some brands seem to re-release the same private-labelled products over and over. The packaging is the real selling point of this product for me.

What do you think? Will you be picking up any Barry M Nail Art Pens? If so, what colours?

Barry M Nail Art Pens cost £4.99 each and are available from Superdrug online and instore and on Barrym.com from 10th April and in Boots online and instore from 17th April (although I think a sneaky few Superdrugs have already released them!).

EDIT: I forgot to mention that they smell really pleasant, a lot like gel pens (I used to collect them from WHSmith when I was younger!), so I don’t think that there is actual nail polish in there! My final bonus of these is that they are shrink-wrapped which means nobody can test them out instore without your knowing, so you will always get a full and untried pen 🙂

Disclaimer: The Barry M Nail Art Pens were kindly sent to me by Barry M for impartial review.