Crocodile shoes!

The nail polishes I'm showing you in this post remind me of the song Crocodile Shoes by Jimmy Nail!  I pretty much grew up with song as my dad used to play it in the car when he drove me and my brother around :)

Currently I'm wearing Starboard by China Glaze with Barry M's Croc effect top coat in black; hence the title of this post :D

Indoors with sunlight.

Indoors, flash.

Starboard is a lovely grassy green colour from China Glaze's Anchors Away collection from Spring 2011.  The formula on this was a bit thin and runny and I did make a bit of a mess at first until I got used to it!  However, you only need two thin coats for full opacity, so I'm not overly fussed by this fact. The first picture is the most colour accurate but this is one of my two favourite greens. It just seems so perfect, it's not to yellow and has this lovely dusky, muted finish that makes it look so good!

Feeling a bit bored I decided to test out my new Barry M Croc effect polish on top...

Indoors, sunlight.

Indoors, flash.

I definitely prefer this croc effect pattern to the shatter polishes that have became so popular and common since last summer!  It really does look like the skin of a crocodile, especially when layered over green!  If you look carefully, you can see the different patterns you get when you use thick coats or thin coats.  My index, ring and little fingers all have one thick coat and although the cracking pattern is fine and small at the edges of the nail, the centres of the nail generally have big cracks.  My middle finger has one thin coat which has resulted in smaller pieces of crackle, uniformly over the nail.  I'm not sure which version I prefer better!

In contrast to shatter polishes that are applied to dry nail polish, this crackle has to be applied to touch-dry nails in-order for the pattern to appear over 3-5 minutes.  Obviously this takes a lot longer than shatters which only take a minute or two to crack and means that the crackle cannot easily be used to spruce up a worn out manicure after a few days without reapplying a top coat before the crackle.  However, I think the awesomeness of the crackle considerably out-weigh the disadvantages!

I'm very happy that I bought this and it means I don't have to use my ugly shatter polishes anymore since this is so much prettier!

What do you think?