Home Gel manicure? Barry M Gelly Hi-Shine Nail Polish

In the pursuit of a nail polish to rival a gel manicure I came across the Barry M Gelly Hi-Shine (£3.99) nail colours, which look good enough to eat! They come in 13 fruity shades and I have the scrummy looking 'Blueberry' and 'Satsuma', the latter is a vibrant orange, almost neon, but the blueberry is more of a cute pastel blue.

I did get a bit excited about the 'gel' element of the product, thinking it potentially had magical non-UV setting properties, but Barry M's Hi-Shine Gel effect Nail Paint just provides an extra glossy finish which has the look of a gel manicure.

Barry M Gelly Hi-Shine in 'Blueberry'

I have to admit, on the first application, I used a friend's basecoat of a brand I'd never heard of before and by the next morning they began to peel off, but in complete chunks almost like stickers.  The peeling was incredibly frustrating, as I was running late anyway, and had to remove (luckily with the peeling, they came off in seconds!) I think however this may have been the dodgy basecoat, as on second application later that evening they lasted a good 6 days.

Barry M Gelly Hi-Shine in 'Satsuma'

The collection of colours are gorgeous, and they have a great shine to them which really stays, so I couldn't resist doing an arty wet gel shot on the Satsuma polish (below).


My only comment would be that as the consistency is similar to a gel, areas that are thinly spread tend to show as slightly darker patches which are hard to hide with a second coat. So unlike usual polish application (where I would do a very thin bottom coat as a base for the next coat to latch on to, followed by a thicker second coat), with the Gelly Hi-Shine I found that each coat needs to be a full covering.  This takes a little longer to dry between coats, but worth it for the overall effect.

Now to collect the rest of the set.....