Barry M Gelly Paprika Mustard and Cardamom swatch and review

Hey there!

I hope you're all doing well?  Here we are at the change of the seasons again, and we're now getting into my favourite!  The leaves are starting to turn, and whether you call it Autumn or Fall, I reckon it's the most beautiful season there is.

Having been completely underwhelmed by high street nail polishes of late, and unwilling to pay the higher prices of indies when I already have so much polish, it means I've actually bought very little lately, and that's why I haven't had very much to show you.  I haven't even done much nail art, and that which I have done has been simple dots or stripes and not really worth shouting about.

However, I was in Superdrug last weekend, and ka-pow! Some polish that made me do a double take.  In fact I might have even said "ooh!" out loud, for here were some polish colours I didn't already own, and in wonderful Autumn colours.  There were 5 or 6 in the range, but Superdrug had a 3 for 2 offer on, so I rationed myself to three.

These were the three polishes I got:

From L-R they are Cardamom, Mustard and Paprika. 

I may as well now show them to you in the same order as this picture, which is just the order I picked them up in my hand (professional to a fault hehe).

For each colour polish I've taken three pictures.  One in direct sun, one in the shade and one showing the bottle so you can see how the polish on the nail compares with the colour in the bottle.

So lets go with Barry M Cardamom.  First in the shade:

The formula was lovely, if you've used Barry M Gellies before, it's pretty much their standard formula.  This is one coat with no top coat, and it had the lovely shine as they all do.  I find that this shine doesn't last long on me and if I manage to wear it for a couple of days without chipping (I'm tough on polish) I find I want to add a topcoat at that point just to get the shine back. 

Usually by a couple of days I've chipped any polish anyway, no matter what the make.  I think it's because I wash my hands alot, and am typing most of the day.

Here it is in direct sun:

I have had to do a little bit of electronic dry skin gardening on these pics.  Not to make my cuticles look marvellous (as I'm sure you can tell) but just to make sure I don't put you off your breakfast.  They were most incredibly dry, despite me treating them better than most Egyptian princesses day and night. They're so ungrateful and insist on shedding all the expensive moisture I try to pamper them with.  Sigh.

Here's the bottle comparison:

I have to say I was a little bit disappointed in this colour when it dried.  As you can see, the colour in the bottle is a more greyed out green, which I prefer, and it dried to a kind of light British Racing Green, which is not what I was looking for.  But still, it's not unpleasant, and I do think I'll wear it.  Dry time was the usual Gelly medium-fast.

Next up we have Barry M Gelly in Mustard, firstly in the shade:

Again this is one coat with no top coat, and for a light colour it gave pretty good coverage.  The same nice formula with a medium-quick dry time.  I do find I have to be quite careful when applying Gellies to wipe the brush stalk or else there is  a high possibility of a big blob of polish making its way onto my nail (or leg, or carpet, etc, in a nail polish Russian Roulette stylee). 

Here it is in the sunshine:

You can see on this pic, very slight VNL on my index finger and the edge of my thumb, but in real life that wasn't noticeable.  Another coat would have sorted it out, but to be honest, I was too lazy.

Here it is with its bottle comparison:

Again, a little bit darker than in the bottle.  When I first applied this colour I said, OMG this does absolutely nothing for my skin tone, but it was that fugly I actually fell a bit in love with it.  Of the three colours, this is my fave, and I think it will be my go-to Autumn colour this year.  Though not really office friendly in the conservative environment at mine so I'll have to reserve it for weekends.

And onto the third colour, Paprika:

A true russet red, this one really did need two coats.  However I didn't, because I'd only done one coat for the other two colours, I wanted to keep the same for this (see also, lazy).  Same formula and dry time as the others.  Reds are not really my thing, but this one is wearable as it's definitely more in the brown family.

Here it is in the sunshine:

This picture is actually pretty spot on colour wise, and is the most office friendly of the three I bought.

Here's its bottle comparison:

Again a bit darker than in the bottle, a recurring theme.

The three look lovely side by side, so I thought I'd mix them up a bit:

I used striping tape to section off the end and middle of my nails and just using the brush from the bottle I painted between the tape.  Leaf for topical interest ;-)

It's not the neatest nailart I've ever done but I absolutely love the end result.  So much so, I took another pic haha.  This time in the sun:

It was topped off with HK Girl Glisten and Glow top coat which is my current favourite.  It doesn't go gloopy and shrink like Seche can after a while.

So there we have it, the three I bought, and I'm very pleased with them.  I would definitely recommend them.  I paid £3.99 per bottle, but as I said I got them on a 3 for 2 offer which means I ended up paying just over £2.50 per bottle.

You can see the full range of the Barry M Gelly colours by following this (link) and the list of ingredients are also there.  Barry M are cruelty free, so guilt free polishing.

The next polish on my want list will be a thermal, I've only got a couple of those and the formula of the ones I have is not great.  Do you have a favourite I should be looking at?

Is Autumn your favourite like mine, or do you prefer another season?

Until next time....

MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~

Barry M Gelly Nail Polish in Olive review plus freehand lace nailart

Woot!  I found some mojo! It's been a long time people, and good to be back.  What an up and down few months I've had. It's certainly true what they say about not fully appreciating your good health until you don't have it.  However, things are looking up now and so I've got room in my brain for the fun stuff.  So OBVS I've gone straight to my finger ends :-)

I've hardly bought any polish these last few months (I knowwwww), and have spent most of my time with just strengthener on them.  My cuticles are awful due to a dermatitis attack, despite constant moisturing I'm pretty sure I'll have to photoshop at least a couple of fingers to prevent my post looking like an episode of Casualty haha.

On a happier note I reached 100,000 pageviews yay!  Actually it's a bit past that, but for some reason I can't fathom, one of my Feelgood Friday posts is getting ALOT of love.  It must be linked somewhere in somebody populars' blog, but because I can't work Google Analytics properly I'll never know.  So I'm not counting the pageviews from that one post, because it makes me look much more popular than I actually am.

So, I went out shopping today and some new Barry M Gellys caught my eye.  I'm always on the lookout for pale green polishes and GNP23 Olive fits that bill perfectly.  A washed out khaki that reminds me very much of Essies Navigate Her, which I loved the colour of, but hated the formula.  I would do a comparison post for you, but am pretty sure I gave Navigate Her away.

So how was it I hear you ask?  Well, here's how the colour looks:

As you can see, a pale grey/green.

Here's the full hand swatch.  It has a coat of HK Girl Glisten & Glow topcoat on it as I forgot to take a picture before I applied it, doh!  It was the usual Gelly shiny finish though.

It's looking slightly more greyed out here than it looks in real life, and it is flattering to my skin tone.  I used two coats, but you could definitely get away with one thickish one if you're using a fast dry topcoat over it.  Dry time was pretty fast, and I didn't have any problem with the formula.  Nice and smooth, and no bubbles, lovely.

But of course, due to the aforementioned return of the mojo, I couldn't just leave them all blank and sensible.  So I went to YouTube to look for some inspiration.  I found some in the form of this video http://youtu.be/yC3P3pIrR3o by LNETSA for some lovely lace nails.  Keeping with the Barry M theme, I used their nail art pen, which I reviewed in full (here)

And this is what I came up with:

I'm really pleased with how they came out, considering they didn't take much time at all, and I'm considering doing a step by step tutorial for them, if anyone would be interested?

As you can see in the background, the bluebells are back out in the garden and I couldn't resist giving them a part in the show:

How gorgeous are they?  And they smell divine.  They really do make something simple like walking up the garden path a pleasure.  Yes, I do stop to smell the flowers, I think we all should whenever we can.  How are your gardens going, do you have flowers out yet?

And finally, back to the polish, here's the brush shot:

This is probably the most accurate picture colour wise, and I would say it has dried to half a shade richer on my nails.  As I said, I had no problems with application and I'm very pleased with it.  I can see it becoming a regular for me.

I paid £3.99 in Superdrug, and because they had a 3 for 2 offer on, I got it a little bit cheaper than that.  In fact I didn't realise about the offer until I already had two things in my hand, so I felt like I got a bonus freebie.

So what do you think, is it a colour or design you'd go for? 

Until next time...

MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~

Christmas Nail Art Challenge - Day 8 - Ornaments

Hi there again!

Hope you're doing fine, and that you're almost ready for Christmas, less thank a week now!  I've posted all my cards off, just got the wrapping to do, and it's all done, then I can relaaaaax.

Here we are at day 8 of the challenge!  Just 4 left to do, and today is ornaments.  I'm back to stamping today.  Here's what I came up with:

The base coat is Barry M Gelly in Blackberry.  I really liked the formula of this, this is one coat, and even without a topcoat it was really shiny.  It also dried pretty quick and was self levelling - fab!

I then used No.7 Stay Perfect in Disco Nights to stamp the ornament-y pattern using Bundle Monster plate BM314.  It stamps really nicely, but dries super quick, so you can't leave it on your stamper for long lining it up, you just have to get it on your nail sharpish!

Then on my middle finger accent nail I used Bundle Monster plate BM225 to stamp the bauble, and a bit of the first stamp across the edge of my nail because the bauble on its own looked a bit bare.  I used Sally Hansen Chrome polish in Ruby Chrome for the bauble.

Here's another pic, I found a prop lol:

Once again I've tried to shy away from traditional Christmassy colours, just to mix it up a bit, I think this combination works well.  Theres a coat of Seche over everything.

Just time for the close up:

Here's a reminder of what's left to come, only four left to go and my blog will go back to normal weekend posting (which will be a relief, probably for you too!):



So I'll be seeing you again on the 21st, with wreath nails, as long as the Mayans weren't on to something.  If it's my last day on earth I'll be too busy guzzling the G&T's!

 

Until next time (hopefully)...

 

MASPOOASE x x x

~Wendy~