Merry Christmas everyone! Hope you all had a lovely day and lots of lovely pressies! I certainly had a wonderful Christmas – I received a lot of AMAZING nail polish and skin care products so I am very chuffed! What did you get?
Here is a lovely red glitter (what do you mean you can tell from the name?!) by the lovely Barry M.
So after doing my blog post on Barry M Lilac Foil Effects from Superdrug, a few days later I wandered into Boots and lo and behold, Boots are doing a Ltd Edition Boots exclusive Barry M too! The offer is identical – spend £6 or more on any Barry M products and get Silver Glitter for free, or just buy it alone for £3.99.
One thing has me totally confused about this polish… The lid has a holographic sticker on, implying the polish is holographic… however, it is just literally a silver glitter top coat. Observe:
See what I mean? The name on the base is ‘Silver Glitter’, so I don’t really know where the holographic lid sticker came from. Maybe it’s for eye-catching-ness.
I’ve literally just put this on over my naked nails, hence the yucky stainage 😛 I did 1 coat on my pinkie, 2 coats on my ring finger, 3 on my middle finger and 4 on my index finger, to show you the opacity (or lack of!). I think realistically this is best suited as a topcoat, because at 4 coats it still isn’t totally opaque.
Silver Glitter dried quickly which is good, especially if you want to wear it alone as a silver glitter polish… you can afford to rush it 😛 At one coat the polish is quite smooth as it’s mostly a clear base with random bits of glitter, but with the increasing amount of coats comes the increasing amount of glittery grittiness so you will need a nice thick topcoat if grittiness bothers you. The glitter is very sparkly without a topcoat.
Oh and by the way, it’s really a lot more sparkly than my pictures let on, it’s because my nails are quite curved that my camera can’t pick up the reflection on the sides, but I promise it is sparkly all over!
So this is a lovely holiday/party/Christmas season polish as it’s very eye-catching. On the other hand, I don’t think it’s anything particularly special as it’s essentially just another silver glitter top coat. So if you already have a silver glitter, I wouldn’t bother with this one unless you’re already buying £6 worth of Barry M products. Even if you are, I’d recommend doing it in Superdrug as the Lilac Foil Effects are far more unique and I certainly haven’t seen anything quite like it before!
You may have noticed that my nails are once again shorter… this is because tomorrow I have a practical exam and they like everything to be clinical and pristine, which means nails must be short and bare for infection control. Which makes me a tad sad, but at least my nails will be nice and strong and I can work on growing out these stains! I am very nervous about tomorrow by the way. Eep.
Hope you are all doing well, it’s getting so close to Christmas and I am ridiculously excited by this 😀 have you entered my giveaway?
Emma x
Disclaimer: Everything mentioned in this blog post was either bought by myself with my own money, or given to me as a gift from friends/relatives. All opinions expressed here are my own.
EDIT: If you think this polish is a little too harsh, too blue or too brushstrokey for your skin tone, have a look at this much softer substitute: Beauty Without Cruelty Heather Mist
EDIT #2: This polish is now available on the Barry M Website, and in Superdrug, sold at £3.99.
Two things to mention before we press on! Firstly, thank you so much to Andy’s mum Gena for buying me this gorgeous nail polish! Secondly, I don’t know whether this is Superdrug exclusive but I get that impression (if Superdrug kept their site remotely user-friendly I’d be able to deduce for you but you know…) This polish is LIMITED EDITION, and FREE if you spend £6 or more on Barry M Nail Paints (this may include other Barry M products, I’m not sure 🙁 sorry girlies!). Otherwise you can buy it alone for £3.99.
Gorgeous, right? It’s worth mentioning that:
Application Tips:
You can pretty much get away with 1 coat. However, from what I’ve experienced, I’d recommend 2 very thin coats as the formula is a little thicker than other Barry M polishes and a thick coat will take a while to dry. Also, try to keep the brush strokes as straight as possible just to avoid any visible brush-stroking, just in case!
I found that the polish dried quickly, which was good, and has that kind of finish that doesn’t really look right with a topcoat 😛 as I mentioned before, it is a little thick, but it’s not really a problem. I can’t really decide whether I’d deem this a pearl or a frost or a chrome finish, somewhere in between I think! Pearly frosty chromey lilac.
Nevertheless, the finish is really lovely, I wasn’t convinced by the silver foil effects Barry M has brought out recently and I know the gold will just look dreadful with my skin tone! But this lilac colour is so pretty, particularly lovely for little girls I think. Well, Christmas is coming up! 😀
I rather love the finish, so much so I now have my eye on China Glaze Metallic Muse in a rather severe way… must… resist!
If I was to give this polish a more interesting name, it would have to involve clouds – it’s just such a calming, relaxing colour!
What do you think of this one? Definitely worth it in my books, even if you get it free and hate it, you can use it for a Christmas present!
I’m getting a little stressed with lots of deadlines coming up at the moment, but I find out my placement details tomorrow so that’s rather exciting! Can’t wait to go Christmas shopping, I’m really getting into the Christmas mood now. Oh, and my mum bought me this lovely cherry-tree fairy light lamp for my bedside the other day – I love it!
Hope you are all doing well my lovelies, have you entered my 100 follower giveaway yet? There are some fab suggestions from two lovely ladies and I’m finding it very helpful finding out what you like or would like to see on my blog!
Let me know your thoughts on Lilac Foil!
Emma x
Disclaimer: Everything mentioned in this blog post was either bought by myself with my own money, or given to me as a gift from friends/relatives. All opinions expressed here are my own.
Sooo… I’ve always been one of those ‘oglers-from-afar’ when it comes to American nail polish brands (purely because of the price), I usually pick out my favourites, put them on a wishlist then realise the wishlist total comes to £100+ and think “Oh my God, step away from the laptop Emma, put your debit card DOWN!”. So it’s quite rarely that I actually buy more than one polish from a collection, and if I do so, it’s usually long after I’ve seen the collection. But then OPI came up with the wonderful glitters of the Muppets Collection and I am on such a glitter kick that of course, I had to have them! That and the fact that ASOS had a 25% for students day meant that I simply couldn’t resist. I bought three of the six glitters in the collection, the first of these being Rainbow Connection.
I wanted to not only show you Rainbow Connection but also what it looks like layered over different polishes. So here we go 🙂 lots of pics btw, hope I don’t crash your browsers!
Click on the pictures to enlarge!
1 coat of Rainbow Connection over 2 coats Ciaté My Fair Lady
2 coats Rainbow Connection over 2 coats My Fair Lady
So hopefully these pictures give you an idea of how the polish looks alone. As far as I can work out, there are 6 colours involved: orange, yellow, turquoisey-blue, green, red-violet, and silver. There are 2 types of glitter involved – small hexagonal glitter and large hexagonal glitter. It’s important to be aware that this larger glitter doesn’t always lie flat and can catch on things, which is why, every time I’ve worn this, I’ve worn a generous coat of topcoat.
Black: Rimmel Black Cab. White: Barry M Matt White.
Index and middle fingers are both 1 coat of Rainbow Connection over 2 coats of the base colour. Ring and pinkie fingers are both 2 coats of Rainbow Connection over 2 coats of the base colour.
I looooove how it looks on the middle finger!
The coloured glitter really ‘pops’ when layered over the bold black and white – I love this combination, particularly over black.
Thumb to pinkie finger (base colours): Boots 17 Fury, Barry M Spring Green, Barry M Yellow, Missguided Misstaken, Eyeko Saucy Polish.
All shown with 1 coat of Rainbow Connection over 2 coats of base colour.
Thumb to pinkie finger (base colours): Barry M Cyan Blue, GOSH Attitude, Barry M Bright Purple, Boots 17 Pink Grapefruit, Rimmel Your Majesty.
All shown with 1 coat of Rainbow Connection over 2 coats of base colour.
I don’t know about you guys, but I definitely prefer Rainbow Connection over black, white, dark blue, gold, or silver. Somehow the rest just don’t do it for me, but I hope I’ve helped someone in doing this 😛 I did notice, just by the way, that Rainbow Connection does look a lot better over shimmer polishes than it does over cremes, so maybe I’ll do another post on that soon!
I have to say… there’s something about this one that makes me think ‘treasure trove’! I’m not so keen on Fury on its own as it clashes with my skin a bit, but paired with Rainbow Connection it looks ah-may-zing!
Application: Rainbow Connection itself is those six different colours of glitter (and 2 different sizes) suspended in a clear base. The glitter is rather sparse, but in my opinion, that makes for a rather good layering glitter 😛 it was quite easy to push the glitter into place if you’re that way inclined, but it does give a fairly even spread of glitter. I have no idea how many coats it would take to make it opaque 😛 It did require quite a thick coat of topcoat to ensure that the larger pieces of glitter weren’t semi-attached and ready to cling onto any loose material it could get hold of. The polish dried quickly so the topcoat requirement wasn’t a problem. I did notice that without the top coat, the clear base seemed to dull the glitter almost, and the topcoat certainly brought it to life!
Now I know that this is VERY similar to Deborah Lippmann’s Happy Birthday, some bloggers go so far as to say they are dupes, but after careful research on Google 😉 I discovered this wonderful Happy Birthday vs Rainbow Connection comparison. So for those of you who are wondering, the general consensus is that they are not dupes – the hexagonal glitter in Happy Birthday is considerably smaller than in Rainbow Connection.
This one will be PERFECT for the party season! 😛 I personally loooooooove this polish to bits, and I have had so many compliments on it at university. People have started paying attention to the fact that my nails are different practically every day – haha! Sorry this is a bit of a long, wordy post, I just seem to have so much to say! 😛
Also, kudos to ASOS Customer Services – at the checkout I was only given 20% off but they refunded me the extra 5% off within 2 days of my order!
Hope you are all doing well my lovelies, give me your thoughts on Rainbow Connection!
Emma x
Disclaimer: Everything mentioned in this blog post was either bought by myself with my own money, or given to me as a gift from friends/relatives. All opinions expressed here are my own.
Have any of you tried Fairy Cake? Reckon mine was just a dud bottle?
Hope you are doing okily dokily, I nipped into town the other day and picked up something for an upcoming giveaway I have planned, more on that when it happens 😉
Emma xxx
Imagination In Colour UK Nail Polish Blog
