Magnetic Manicure

I'm a big fan of nail polish and it's really exciting to see all of the new beauty tech out there at the moment meaning that we can try out the latest trends at home without the expensive salon prices.

Today I'm going to try out a magnetic manicure using Barry M's Instant Nail Effects in Magnetic Blue (£4.99). Each metallic colour comes with a different magnet design in the cap of the bottle, so the pattern is dependent on the colour that you get. Magnetic Blue comes with what looks like a Picasso Union Jack pattern

The bottle comes with instructions, so I thought I'd set the blog post out according to those steps:

1. Shake the bottle well to ensure magnetic particles are evenly distributed throughout nail paint - Done!


2. Apply a basecoat and then apply one coat of your magnetic nail paint and allow to dry
The first coat has a lovely metallic look to it on its own, so it's also good to know that you can get two looks out of this bottle, it comes out a bit paler than what the polish looks like in the bottle, but you have to brush it quickly as the metallic particle can make the polish appear a bit streaky if not applied evenly.

3. Apply second coat and IMMEDIATELY hover the magnet over the nail for 5 to 10 seconds and watch the effect appear
The lid has a ridge on it so you can rest it on your finger so it doesn't touch the nail and can hover over. Pretty handy, but I discovered that on the smaller nails you need to move the ridge further down your finger to ensure that the pattern appears in the centre of the nail.


So I was very impressed with the effect of the magnetic print, the pattern magically appeared and looked very cool.

4. Once dry apply topcoat

Sadly the top coat blurred the magnetic effect, which is a real shame! The shape of the magnetic pattern is still visible, but the wow effect has been lost, as you can see they still look cool, but not as good as they did before the top coat.

However this may be because of my topcoat as it is a super strength one, maybe just using a clear varnish would be fine, but it wouldn't provide the resilience of a top coat.

In order to get the most out of the magnetic effect nails, I wouldn't recommend using a top coat and just plan to have them for only one night/day, (rather than doing a top coat to make them last a long time).....in the word of Kurt Cobain "It's better to burn out, than fade away" - ok, I NEVER thought I'd manage to get Kurt Cobain into a beauty blog!!!!

The cool thing about the different patterns on the magnets is that you can collect the whole range to mix and match colours and effects.