OPI Skull & Glossbones + Silver Shatter

I'm really impresses with the Pirates collection from OPI. All the polishes are pale and have this dusty feel to them, but surprisingly I really like that. Skull & Glossbones is one of the nicest polish from the whole collection in my opinion. It is this pale grey, kind of bone colour, super creamy polish. This was just two coats and I wore it for 4 days. I was afraid that this grey polish would look bad next to my pale skin, but I like how it looks. We'll see how it looks in winter though.

And here is Silver Shatter over Skull & Glossbones. I think they go well together, and this is pretty much the only crackle polish that I like. Perhaps that's because the contrast between the polishes is not that big.

Today I'm wearing this

I have recently realized that after getting the Barry M's crackle polish months ago and trying it out only a couple of times I haven't really used it since. So I wanted to change that. I also noticed that the polish itself is noticeably thicker and slightly more difficult to work with, it's harder to apply it thinly and thus to get many small cracks. Also I suck at choosing the base coat that would look nice and interesting, apart from using a few pastels I haven't tried anything else. So this is how this mani came about - pick the most unlikely polish and go.
This is two coats of OPI Catch Me In Your Net and a medium coat of Barry M Instant Nail Effects. This is also one of the few times when I prefer the crackle effect to be shiny so I have one coat of Orly Glosser on top.

Orly Starry-eyed

I'm not exactly sure what originally possessed me to get Starry-eyed. Perhaps I just liked the idea of a of a mini polish and hoped the color would be different to what it actually is. In the bottle the polish has this slight sage or faint blue color and some silver micro glitter. At first I didn't really like it, perhaps because I expected it to be more opaque and less frosty-looking. But now I quite like it, it's my go to polish for when I can't be bothered and just want my nails protected. This is two coats, and on me it dries really quickly.

Another thing I like about this polish very much is how it looks with the crackle polish on. It's great since the crackle is matte and this one is so frosty, I like the contrast. This is probably my favorite way to wear crackle polish - without any bright color.

Barry M Instant Nail Effects

This is the last polish that I got from Barry M. It's a black crackle polish that dries super fast and is matte. Well, when all the crackle polishes started appearing, I wasn't convinced that it was for me. I was already sure that I wasn't going to get Black Shatter (it's quite expensive and I wasn't sure I would like it or use it), so trying this was a less costly alternative.
I mean sometimes these bold looks (and some colors) make me look like I'm 13 or something. But when I started layering Barry M on top of different polishes and finishes, I actually was pleasantly surprised. It's fun to watch the polish dry and crackle, since it's so fast, plus it looks really different when you put thick and thin layers. Overall, I do like the effect, but the best thing about it is that it is matte, because it balances out the shine of the polish. Whenever I had a shiny top coat on it was just too much for my liking. On white the coat is thicker so you get fewer crackles, but they are more noticeable. On blue the coats on the sides were thinner and produce more crackles that are thinner.

With a top coat on.


There was one crackle look that I particularly liked, but didn't take a picture - light polish with frosty shimmer with matte crackle on top. I will do it again soon and post the photo.