Barry M is always my go to for nail varnish when I'm looking for something that's vibrant and easy to apply. I have various different colours; however they tend to all be either green, gold or red. Recently I branched out into something different and bought a beautiful sky blue colour called 'Blueberry' - a perfect pastelly colour for spring time and right on trend.

Overall I find Barry M polishes very good value for money at just £2.99 for a 10ml pot. I have yet to run out of a shade though I am not regular with my nail painting. The flipside of that being that equally, I have a lot of very old Barry M polishes and they're all still perfectly good to use even five years plus on! Barry M nail varnish comes in pretty much every shade you can imagine, from red right through to black. They do pastels, metallics, crackle and 'effect' paints and shimmery colours to die for. I think they may even do glittery polishes as well, which are great for both younger teens and the young at heart!

The current trend is crackle/effect paints, which basically mean you can do fun little things on your nails in a few easy steps. Crackle paints go over an existing nail varnish colour and as they dry, bits of the nail varnish chip away so you're left with an almost wood grain effect on your nail. Effect nail varnishes don't require a base coat normally and use a magnet in the lid to make patterns in the tiny fragments of metal in the nail varnish. I've seen shimmers, stars, hearts and there's probably a lot more out there. I'm hoping that the next big thing in nails will be nail art pens - and that Barry M will bring out a wide range of different colour nail art pens so I can have fun doodling in a colour other than black!

In terms of actual use, Barry M nail varnishes are amongst the best I've ever used. They're thick without being gloopy and dry fairly quickly which means that you only need a couple of paints to do your nails, taking a matter of minutes rather than the half hour I'm used to! Once dried the varnish is very chip resistant and mine normally lasts for about a week before I start thinking 'gosh, I should redo/take my nail varnish off' as long as I put a top coat on. The colour remains the same in the bottle and on your nail which I think is a really important feature; I've had other nail varnishes that look like a great shade on the bottle but when you actually paint your nails with them they don't hold up. The blueberry colour I talked about at the start of the review is really something else; it's a really nice colour that I can't wait to use properly with some nice spring clothes!

The only downside I can find to Barry M nail varnishes is that their top coat is too runny and doesn't stay on well enough for my liking; I don't really use it most of the time as I feel it's just a bit of an effort for something that doesn't make a lot of difference. If I'm doodling with my nail art pen though I will take the extra time to use it so that the design is 'set' properly. I also occasionally find that the thickness of the nail varnish means that half of my nail is a darker shade than the other due to it pooling in the middle of my nail. This is easily sorted as long as it's spotted quickly by going over the nail again though.

I get a distinct feeling of excitement every time I go near a Barry M stand - I love all their products and the wide range of colours they come in, and the nail varnishes do not let the brand down in any way. I will continue buying these products and varnishes because they really do stand out against all the others on the market; yes they're not massively expensive so may get overlooked but the quality and application is great and they're really good fun.