Tiger Tiger! with Barry M Confetti - Liquorice

Hi Goddesses

At the weekend, I showed you swatches of 3 of the 5 Barry M Confetti polishes.  In there, was one nail which I had dressed up as a tiger, and I liked it so that I just had to do a whole mani.

As before, this has a base of Barry M Block Orange, and then using the brush inside the bottle, I carefully swiped some tiger stripes.

Because the Confettis are dense, you can do things like this with them.  A lot of other glitters are too sparse or too large, making patterning difficult, but you can stripe away with these ones :)

The Confetti post, by the way, is the least popular Barry M post I have ever done - maybe I'm not the only one who doesn't like hairy glitter?

Oh well, hair on a hairy tiger, where it belongs, that's ok :)

Enjoy xx :)

Crumpet's Choice - The 7 Barry M Nail Paints You Can't Live Without

Hi Goddesses

And welcome to an exciting new series on The Crumpet - Crumpet's Choice.   It basically gives me any and every excuse to walk you through my stash, my preferences, my polish loves and anything else that tickles my fancy.

We start with the awesomeness that is Barry and his M.  Originally, this post was going to draw from ALL his polishes, but as we have 5 new Gellies on the way, I thought I'd split it.  So today focuses on the cremes, the Nail Paints.

Barry M has many gorgeous colours, and many of his most popular shades - eg the Ice Creams - are not amongst my personal favourites.  What I have here though are the 7 I use the most, that I feel are the most unusual or to die for or unique, or that just provide a very specific balance to your collection.  If you're lucky enough to have 60 seconds to scoop up 7 Barry M polishes, these are the ones I'm suggesting you choose.

We start with Block Orange.  This is my most used Barry M.  It's just THE perfect orange, and it's also super glossy.  Worse, it started my orange obsession.  I never loved an orange until this polish, and I haven't found another orange since that's as pure or as perfect.




(YIKES!  super nubs!)

Next, Indigo.  This is just a stunning shade.  When I bought it, it was quite unique in the polish world, but lots of other brands have since attempted something similar - Miss Emo Shun All by Sation being the closest dupe.  This polish is just  soooooo dramatic and deep and intense. It's amazing, and again, I have no other purple that compares to it.

I think this next choice will surprise you - Lime Green.  We all know I am a hater of greens, and my skin particularly abhors warm greens, so how the hell does this make the cut?   Well, it's just so ugly that it's gorgeous.  It transfixes me ha ha.   I literally can't stop staring when I wear this one.   Admittedly, this colour is less unique in polish world, and it's also one of the thinnest Barry M polishes I've encountered - I usually need 3 coats for opacity - but I guess that also means it's one of the few Barry M's that will provide you with a jelly sammich.




(are those REALLY my nails???!!!  ugh!)

Shocking Pink.   To be fair, it's not that shocking, it could stand being dialled up a couple of notches, but this is a perfect pink.  For me, it just sits in the centre of the pink spectrum - not too blue, not too red; not too light, not too dark; not too white based, not too corally.   It's poised on the axis of perfection, and that's why I use it a lot.






And then we have 3 blues.  I always considered Barry M one of the best brands for blues - and blue probably appeared more times in his range than any other - but recently other brands have overtaken him here, namely KIKO.

Blue Moon however, is essential.  This is a super soft, super light baby blue with the teensiest bit of shimmer, and for a long time, it was unique in my stash.  Other brands are now catching up with it, but at a higher price.  This is probably my all time Number 2 Barry pick.

Next we have Blueberry Ice Cream, which is just lu-uh-ush.   This is probably the only ice cream shade I genuinely love, as (for me) the other colours can be a bit sickly.   This is just blue perfection.  It's also almost opaque in one coat.  I use this a lot as it's the perfect colour for the sky in nail art.  Just delicious.






And then we have Cyan Blue.  When I bought this, again, it was unique, and I think it may still be.  It's not quite turquoise, and it does lean darker than the bottle, but there are literally a million variations in this little niche of the blue spectrum.   Again, this is effortless application.  If you want a nice bright, summery blue, this is your polish.

And that's it, your 60 seconds is over!   Which was your favourite?   There are LOTS of Barry M swatches on this blog (just use the search box), and you can also click the logo in my sidebar to go directly to their website.  


You can also click on this post HERE to see pics of my Barry stash.  It's grown a bit since then, but it's got some pretty photos :)


Barry M have a really good price point, which is part of their appeal in the UK.  More importantly, they LAST.  They are more chip-resistant than most brands, and I'd say that was more valuable.  


In the US, you can pick them up at Ninja Polish.


Enjoy xx :)

NEW31DC - Inspired By A Game - Trivial Pursuit

Hi Goddesses

Today's mani is quite a complex one for me, and it's also the one that persuaded me that I needed to invest in some acrylic paints, but more on that later.

Inspired By A Game immediately made me think of 2 things - Twister, and Connect 4.   To be honest, they both seemed quite basic dotticures, and then quite by accident I thought of Trivial Pursuit.

I hit on the idea of doing each nail a different coloured cheese (where's the green? not here!) and then realised I was going to need to do chevrons.  I've done chevrons before.  I'm not awesome at them, but I'm ok.

But here lay the problem with this mani.  Ideally, you would want to do the cheese chevron on top of the blue base.  Except there is no way you would get your cheeses to pop colourwise.  So instead, I had to paint my nail the cheese colours (thanks Barry M) and then chevron (KIKO 335) around them - which as you can see, got a little messy.

I did these with nail tape and I am really annoyed I didn't remember til 2 days later that I had chevron shaped nail stickers which would have done a better job.  Grrrrrr.   So yes, I'm annoyed with the messy lines.  And this is what tipped me over the acrylics line - apparently they would have been opaque over the blue, so soon my lovely goddesses, we will have acrylic nail art adventures!

Green ?  Well, to be honest, green would have matched better thematically (and Barry M Spring Green would have been perfect) but when I play Triv, green is always the one I struggle with, so I thought the mani would be more real without the green, cos I rarely get that cheese ha ha.

On top, I did then some stamping courtesy of the marvellous MJ plates from Meann at My Online Shop.  They are full of quirky images.  Just to be clear, we have - 

- thumb - blue = geography = globe

- index - pink = entertainment = film (Superman)

- middle - orange = sport = checkered flag

- ring - yellow - history = leaning Tower of Pisa

- pinkie - brown = arts & literature = scroll and university hat thing

See, a lot of thought went into this !!!  Lol, tomorrow we have Inspired By Your Childhood and ANOTHER mani I ended up doing twice.

TTFN xx :)

NEW31DC - Day 16 - Colour Opposites

Hi Goddesses

Welcome to Day 16 - the official halfway point of the challenge!  Today is also the 3rd and final time you get to see what I did with Barry M Block Orange.

As I think I've mentioned, colour opposites are really intriguing me right now, and I don't need much excuse to try and combine something that should clash.  Ever since the summer I've also loved the combination of orange and pink, so here we are :)

This mani ended up with a further opposition which I didn't plan - the matte v glossy effect.  For my pink I chose ManGlaze Lesbihonest, which is 1 coat of sublime perfection.  It dries matte (as you see here), but looks equally gorgeous with a top coat, which was my plan ....

... but there was just something so perfect about the colour clash and the texture clash that I couldn't bring myself to top coat it.   

Simple, and effective.  Love it.

Enjoy xxx

NEW31DC Day 13 - Cheer Yourself Up! Barry M Block Orange

Hi Goddesses

I decided to go VERY simple for today's theme.

As most of you know, I am married to the colour purple.  She calms me and she understands me, and that's exactly how it should be.   Over the last year though, I've developed a bit of a crush on orange.   Especially because I suffer from depression, I've really noticed how orange polish makes me SMILE, so today's post is dedicated to the cheering upping qualities of orange :)

If I could only own 1 orange, this would be it - Block Orange from Barry M.  It's probably the colour that made me fall in love with orange.  It's bright, it's juicy, it's super glossy.  It's just perfect, and I use it a lot, as a base and in nail art.

This is one of Barry's standard polishes, but a bit like Blue Moon, this has a more jelly quality to it, and takes 3 coats to really build up.   The jellyness though is what gives it it's most adorable quality - it's squishiness :)

Ah, you can't go wrong with a bit of Barry.  I love this so much I recycled it for Day 10 and Day 16 :)

Here's what's coming up on the challenge over the next week - there's some really goodies on the way :)

Enjoy xx Love :)

NEW31DC Day 10 - Geometric

Hi Goddesses

Geometric, twice in one week ?   Erm, yeh.  Tuesday's post was for the Digit-al Dozen Challenge, and today's is for the New31DC.  Wouldn't it have made sense to combine them and do them both today?  Yeh, it really would.  And why didn't you ??  Er, I forgot ....?

Lol, silly Crumpet!  I did this mani a couple of weeks ago, totally forgetting that I'd decided to do a tape mani for the Digit-al Dozen - major DOH mo.  So here we are.  This is actually the 3rd version of the same mani, and ironically, you'll see all 3 recyclings in reverse order.

This started out life as 2 coats of Barry M Block Orange, with some ManGlaze Lesbihonest zig-zags.  I then carved up the zig zag pattern with my black striper, trying to create some angular shapes, and then coloured them in with some summer brights - Barry M Blood Orange and Blackberry - and Barry M Silver foil.

Overall, I really like it, and I like the colour palette I used.  The only thing I don't like is how thick my black lines are, and it's annoying, because I even trimmed my striper brush. Maybe I'm just too clunky handed :(

Tomorrow it's .... splatter !!!  You mean 2 splatters in one week ?  Yes.  In addition to 2 geometrics ?  Oh shut up ;P

Love xx