Nails of the Month October 2013, featuring Maybelline, Barry M and Revlon

I didn’t do a Nails of the Month post for September, because I was so busy I hardly had a moment to apply nail varnish. I kept putting on clear base coat with the intention of applying a coloured polish later, but never getting around to it. But this month I’ve made more of an effort!

I think these dotty polishes have sold out now in the UK, I haven’t seen one anywhere for weeks. It looks purplish in the bottle but comes out pure pink, and it looks best after two coats. It’s difficult to apply, especially to the tips, because of the speckles – it’s almost impossible to get an even coverage without getting too many speckles on the edges. They overhang and scrape off easily, so tip wear occurs very quickly. But it’s very pretty once you get it right and while it lasts!

One coat provides really good coverage, it only looked patchy in a few places, however, I did get a little tip wear after one day. It’s a very dark pink, as long as you’re looking at it in natural light. In artificial light (florescent tube, light bulb) it looks dark red and not as nice.

A lovely colour but pretty horrible to apply. Usually I wait a day or so before doing a second coat as it covers the first day’s tip wear and applies more easily, but the first coat was horrendously patchy so I had to apply another straight away. It looked much better with two coats but took ages to dry and in the two days after it acquired many dents and smudges. It also stuck to my cuticles and I had to scrape it off, which left the gaps you can see here. I might try adding some thinner to see if that improves the formula. In the end I applied a glitter top coat, Revlon ‘Star’, so that I could get more wear out of it. But I took that photograph on November 1st, so to see that you’ll have to wait until next month, or check out my Instagram profile!