REVIEW: Barry M nail art pens

After coveting pictures of perfectly painted nails on Instagram for hours at a time, I decided it was finally time to try it for myself. With whole days to spend mastering my manicure, I was ready to progress from cheating with clever nail effect polishes to letting my (supposed) creative streak run wild.

I'd seen a lot of positive reviews of the new Barry M nail art pens, so decided to purchase a couple for myself. With a super fine nib and easy grip bottle, they're advertised as being super easy to use. At the moment they're available in black, white, pink and silver, but I'd imagine that once they've been out for a while they'll bring out more colours.

I'd used nail art pens before, but the kind where you squeezed to get the colour flowing. I always found these difficult to use, as it was tricky to control the flow of varnish, and I could never get anything close to a neat line. 

With the Barry M pens, you pump them a couple of times to get the colour flowing, then write as if you were using a normal pen. This makes it really easy to get neat basic shapes, as well as create more intricate designs. 

I let my sister and my friend run wild on my nails before giving it a go myself, here are the results:

After a few initial hiccups, the final result was pretty impressive. After painting all my nails with a base colour and leaving it to dry, they used the pens along with a second colour and dotting tool to create a quirky aztec pattern. The good thing about this is that each nail can be different, so you don't have to worry about perfectly replicating a design each time. The pens dry pretty quickly, so you don't have to wait too long to add extra details and decorations. The colour is pretty opaque too, so there's no need to go over the same area more than once.

When these sadly began to chip, I felt like it was time to try it for myself. Inspired by a photoshoot I'd seen in Company magazine, I went for a fairly simple American flag design:

Although the stars were a bit tricky, I was pretty happy with the final result. The pens are really easy to work with, even when using your non-writing hand, After a bit of practice, I can imagine that it will be fairly easy to create a range of intricate designs and pretty patterns. I'll keep you posted on my nail tales!