Butter London Cut Up Collection Swatches!

Hi everyone! I’m baaaaack! It’s been awhile since i’ve done a post here. The story is not a very interesting one. I broke a nail badly and had to wait until it grew back before I could swatch again.

But it finally grew back, and here I am, with shorter nails.

So awhile back I was at Marshalls, and I was excited to see this on the shelf.

Marshalls and TJMaxx sometimes sell Butter Londons, but I'd never seen sets there before. They were selling for $8, so I quickly snapped it and I'm going to show you the polishes included here today!

So without further ado, here's the Butter London Cut Up collection!

First up is Dust Up, a polish with micro gold glitter and small copper glitter in a clear base. This one is the most dense out of the collection, but I don't think it could be quite opaque on its own. I used two coats over LA Colors Delicate for the photos.

Next is Anorak, a polish with black and white hexes and silver and white shred glitters in a clear base. It looks pretty in the bottle and I thought it would be my favorite but then I put it on. The formula has some issues. It doesn’t go on smoothly, and you have to dab it on as you go. Sometimes even then its hard to get it to look even. The glitter clumps up or the base dries on the brush while you’re trying to dab it on and it smears. Yeah, i’m not terribly impressed considering that Butter London is a high end brand. This is what it looks like with patience. I used two-ish coats over a blue creme from Rue21.

Last is Titchy, rainbow glitter with blue micro glitter in a clear base. This one also looked amazing in the bottle but was a bit of a let down on the nail. It didn’t have any formula problems it just didn’t really wow me. Maybe it was the shade of blue I used for the base. I don’t know. It was a bit hard to photograph, but I did my best. I layered it over Maybelline Dayglow Teal for the pictures. I used two coats on my middle and ring fingers and one on my pinky and index to show you the glitter pay off.

Overall, this collection is okay. Not good, not bad, just okay. If I had paid full price for it I would’ve been disappointed, but fortunately I only paid $8. So considering the price I got it for, i’d still say it was a pretty good deal. I’ll have to experiment with other base colors to see what looks best with them (particularly Dust Up).  

Anyway, see you next time here on the blog! Happy Painting!

Claire's Dime A Dozen Review and Swatch

Hi everyone! So I was at the mall, making my rounds to the stores that sell nail polish(Yep, no clothes shopping for me at the mall..just polish. haha). I went into claire’s and saw that they have a couple of cool special collections right now. The mood polishes, which are thermals, and some that say “Liquid metal”. These come in an opaque black bottle and the shiny cap supposedly tells you what color it is. I was particularly drawn to the silver in the collection. I don’t currently own a silver chrome (I bought OPI Push and Shove but she tragically perished in a brutal fall to the floor. Rest in peace.), so I bought it, and it is the polish that I have to share with you today.

Claire's Dime A Dozen Sunlight

Claire's Dime A Dozen Intense Sunlight

Claire's Dime A Dozen Shade

It's called Dime A Dozen(which I think is a great name for it), and as I stated before, it's a silver chrome. I do want to note that it's not a pure, white leaning silver, it goes more towards grey. I like that, because I think it makes it look more like actual metal.

Now for the review,

Application

I have mixed feelings about the way it applyed. At first I tried to apply it straight onto my nails with no base coat (I usually do this unless I think something is going to stain, because I think it better shows the polish since not everybody has the same base coat and some don't use one at all), and was really impressed with how opaque it was. It was technically completely opaque in one coat, but once it started drying I saw the problem.

I'd forgotten that chromes show every ridge and imperfection on nails, and I'm one of the unfortunate few who has a lot of ridges. I'm an ex-biter (*gasp*), and needless to say my nails are far from smooth.

So I took that off, and this time applied a coat of Essie Ridge Filler Base Coat before the chrome. There were less ridges shown, but this presented another problem. Streaks. Every time I went over a place twice with my brush it would streak a little bit, and the brush in the bottle, while it was easy to control, was skinny and stiff and made it difficult to cover the nail in less that four strokes. One good thing I found was that once it dried most of the streaks disappeared. So if you get this apply your first coat then let it dry before putting on another.

Look

I like the effect of this polish. If you can get it smooth it looks very metal like.

Price

Currently it costs about $6.50 at Claire's stores. I can't find the online price so that is not definite.

Overall

It's not my favorite thing in the world, but I don't hate it either. The effect is pretty cool once you put in the effort to get it smooth, or if you're one of the lucky ones with no ridges (I'm so jealous of you).

Before I sign off, I do want to add that putting 2 coats of Butter London Dodgy Barnett over it makes a really pretty metallic silver/grey holo. :)

Tah dah! I love that combination! I hope you enjoyed this post! Happy Painting!