Butter London New Years Eve Nail Art

The amount of polishes I used in this manicure is almost embarrassing. Overkill much? Whatever, it's New Years Eve! It also went much better than I had any right to expect it to be. This is the first time I've used my Butter London stock and I they mostly worked really well. Very easy to use, especially in the capacity I did. Except for one. There's always one, isn't there?

I started out with the vague idea that I was again going to keep it simple. I just wanted to try maybe fireworks, maybe paint the years on them and it started going so well that I just spiraled out of control and did all of it. :)

Update: A-England King Arthur Matte

Beautiful polish. A few chips here and there but nothing horrid.

No excess problems with it being a matte, either. Perhaps I'll revisit that Essie MAY and see if it was something I did and not the polish.

Hey! About that smelly China Glaze Matte Magic!

A-England King Arthur Matte

I went...wow, completely in the no bright colors, non artsy, anti-Christmas direction this time. That was fast. I may have also performed a bit of blasphemy with this one. A-England's polishes are universally beautiful, I can almost guarantee I'll own all of them someday.

King Arthur is a silvery frosty grey color. This is actually my first use of any of the brand. Application was decent, it goes on sort of thin, but it was smooth and easy to get that three stroke finish. The first coat left a few gaps but the second was enough to close them so I left it there.

And then it got interesting.

Update: AtC A Munkle for Your Uncle

This is going to be just the worst update I've done so far for the simple fact that I totally forgot to take a picture before I removed the polish. I wore it three days and I assure you that there was absolutely nothing wrong with it. There was hardly a difference between what I took off and the pics in the original post. None of the glitter shells came off, no chipping, hardly any tip wear. And one of my cats just loves chewing on my nails, so those thick shells held up very well. I mostly just fell out of the Christmas glitter spirit and wanted it off. It even removed well, with foils, it came off very smoothly.

A Munkle for Your Uncle gets a self high five from me, do go buy it it if you can still get hold of it.

Jess

To you and yours...

Welcome to the Family!

It's Christmas Eve, and I got a new addition to my little family!

My husband got me an adorable little girl kitten for Christmas. I haven't settled on her name yet, as I want to get to know her a little better, but early runners in the name competition are Sunshine, Butterscotch, and Noel. Jess suggested I go with all three, which is actually rather likely...as soon as I figure out if they all fit her, and which order to put them in :)

...hey, the header says we discuss cats around here, right? Right!

Merry Christmas, y'all.

Above the Curve A Munkle for Your Uncle

I was not feeling more nail art this week. I had some vague concept of a Christmas colors French but even that was more effort than I was willing to put forth. This polish is the first on my stash list and is specifically for Christmas, so I went with a Glitter Bomb Shell.

This polish is not meant to be used that way. It's not just a crap ton of glitter packed in a bottle with just enough base to make it polish-like. It's really meant to be used as a top coat over another color and when used as such, looks really gorgeous. Perfect Christmas colors, it reminds me of a multicolor string of Christmas lights. That was why I bought it. I discovered as I was putting it on that it would not work well as a GBS.

Santa Nail Art featuring Butter LONDON Knees Up

Time for a fun Christmas mani! Are you ready, kids? Here we go!

My original idea didn't work out very well, which you will see if you read through to the end of this post. So I googled "simple Christmas mani" to get ideas on something I might actually have enough artistic talent to pull off. I sent a text to Jess, asking "Christmas lights, Santa, or snowman?" She said she wanted to see all three, so I eliminated Christmas lights and texted her again. "Santa or snowman?" She said Santa, so that's what I went with.

Update: Christmas Tree Nail Art

Once again, nothing to see here. No surprises, everything held up well. Heart China Glaze.

I'm not even going to use a jump break. Nothing else to say lol

Jess

With Apologies

Hey guys! Just wanted to drop a quick post and apologize for my lack of attention to you and the blog this week. I got felled by a combination sinus infection/flu/bronchitis thing. I haven't even painted my nails this week!! I did start a pretty Christmas mani, but I only finished one hand and by the time I felt like doing the other, the first one was already falling part so I gave up and removed it all. I have a few pictures which I will share in my next post. Thanks for your patience--I'll be back soon!

Christmas Tree Nail Art

This time around I wanted to try some Christmas trees. Going from the decorations to the actual tree itself, yes. I appear to be zooming out. I got the idea from art a fan posted on OPI's facebook page a few weeks ago, but I did mine with tools instead of freehand. It seems to work better for me that way lol.

Update: Christmas Tree Decoration Nail Art

Nothing to see here, folks. It's China Glaze, so I'd expect no problems. And didn't get any chip-wise.

Including a nice MSPaint smiley face because I did a number on my cuticle. Sometimes I just can't help but rip those darn hangnails right out, I tell ya.

Christmas Tree Decoration Nail Art

Or what I call nail art. I'm not really sure I've reached the level of "art" yet. In fact, lol I'm pretty positive. But I'm trying!

From here.

These were my inspiration. Fairly easy to do, not much detail, still trying to keep with the simple stuff until I get better at it. My other inspiration was the new Color Club Winter Affair collection which is the single most confusing polish collection I've ever tried to buy. Twelve zillion different colors all named the same three things. And they smell. They're not merely scented, no. They smell.

Ludurana Supernova

I'm a sucker for a good duochrome or multichrome polish. Same goes with holographic polishes. And when I found out that Ludurana had come out with a multichrome holo, I knew I had to have it. Enter Llarowe, stage left already! I placed my order and less than a week later, I got that little orange slip in my mailbox that means my mail man is a lazy jerk who refuses to walk up three stairs and knock on my door I had a package waiting for me at the post office. Friday morning, I picked up my package and drove immediately home. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. And this is what I got:

Update: butter LONDON Abso-bloody-lutely

I've read a lot of lacquer blogs in my time. I've seen other peoples' opinions on various polishes, and I do my best to put those out of my mind when I'm using a polish I've never tried before.That being said, I've seen a handful of people saying that butter LONDON polishes chip too easily. That it only takes a day or two and it's back to the drawing board.

Update but more about Hard Candy Matte-ly In Love

Because I don't think an update is really necessary on this. Dana has already covered that for us and the only difference between the two was we used different brand blacks as the base color. I should also mention that when I decided to try this again I did not have high hopes that it would work so I totally didn't use any kind of base coat whatsoever. I was fully expecting to have to remove it and choose something else.

With that said...

Butter London Hampstead Heath vs Wallis

I've seen a few posts around here and there about the new butterLONDON goop colors and how Hampstead Heath looked very similar to Wallis. I thought so at first glance, too, based on the few pictures we had to go on. I got my lol Trifecta as well so I thought I'd do a comparison swatch of the two and post it in case anyone else was interested.

But guess what? I'm totally not going to bother ruining my very first water marble for it.

First Look! butter LONDON for goop Trifecta of Bespoke Lacquers limited edition Winter 2012

A couple of weeks ago, Jess linked me to a page on Goop, to show me a triad of limited edition butter LONDON colors, specifically the butter LONDON for goop Trifecta of Bespoke Lacquers. Two of the three colors grabbed me right away, so I decided to pull the trigger. I received my lacquers yesterday, and as my previous piCture pOlish/Ozotic mani was on the verge of derailing, I removed it and jumped on the butter LONDON train this afternoon.