butter LONDON Spring/Summer 2012 Swatches: Knackered

As you probably know, I use my very own hard-earned money to pay for everything I show on this blog. So you know if I feature an entire collection of something on this blog, I must love it a whole lot because I paid for it! Well, that's exactly what happened with the Spring/Summer collection from butter LONDON. I saw promo pics of it, and I knew that I was going to end up buying the whole thing. I just love every. single. color!

Which is precisely why I'm going to show swatches of this collection in separate posts. I can't wait to show you guys my first collection swatches, but I want to take my time and enjoy wearing them before I take them off to swatch the next one. So for the next 10-15 days or so, enjoy these swatches of the amazing spring/summer collection from butter LONDON! First up, Knackered, a sheer teal-gray/lavender duochrome with tiny holographic glitter! (I just shivered a little from writing that.)

This photo pretty accurately shows the color-shift of the duochrome.

On the first coat of this polish, I thought there was no way it would build up to opacity. It's very sheer. It would work well as a layering polish, although I personally don't think I would like the way that would look. It becomes pretty opaque at three coats - VNL is still slightly visible but not noticeable. It applies a bit brushstroke-y, and you must wait for each coat to dry before applying the next one or it will drag and create strange "ripples" in the polish - you can kind of see this effect on my middle finger, where I attempted to fill in a bald spot and messed it up.

Blurred to show the holographic glitter

This is such a unique polish, and while I'm still on the fence whether I love it or not, I'm very glad to have it in my collection!

Stay tuned for the remaining four colors from butter LONDON's Spring/Summer collection!

NOTD: Another Hefesto masterpiece!

Gorgeous!

I've been dreaming up different layering combinations I could do with Speciallita Hefesto - a sheer holographic top coat - ever since I got it last week. On my first post about it, commenter Monica suggested I try it over a black or grey polish, and I thought that was a GREAT idea! I had never seen a true grey holo before. To bling it out even more, I decided to go with OPI Lucerne-tainly Look Marvelous, a shimmery charcoal grey with hints of green and purple shimmer. With one coat of Hefesto over it, I couldn't stop staring at my nails! The sun even peeked out while I was driving, and I kept stretching my fingers out on the steering wheel so I could sneak glances at the rainbow goodness.

I love Hefesto for layering over a tired creme, but layering it over another glitter/shimmer polish is just out-of-this-world amazing. Great suggestion, Monica!! Any other ideas, folks?

NOTD - Choose-your-own-holo!

By now everyone knows about the amazing Speciallita Hits no Olimpo collection. I REALLY wanted to get the whole collection, but that was just not feasible with shipping charges from Brazil :) To satisfy my craving, I decided to just spring for Hefesto, which I was able to find on Ebay for a pretty reasonable price. Hefesto is a sheer holographic topcoat, which enables you to turn any color your heart desires into a holo!

I really wanted to try Hefesto on top of a color that I've never seen as a holo before. I decided to try it out on top of American Apparel Dynasty, which is a medium red-toned lavender creme. This is an untried polish for me. The reason I haven't gotten around to wearing it is because it was the third polish in a 3 for $15 sale they were having on their polish a few months ago, and while I was able to choose the first two immediately, none of the other colors jumped out at me and it took me a while to decide what my third one was going to be, so I just wasn't excited to wear it. It was a great choice to wear under Hefesto! It makes for a really unique combination. It's a good winter-to-spring transitional mani, I think.

What do you think of this combination? What color should I wear under Hefesto next?

NOTD - Orly Fowl Play

I was loving my NOTD from yesterday, but for some reason the finish looked so dull already today that it was bothering me and I had to take it off. I have to fulfill another request - from my boyfriend, who wanted purple.

Flash

Purple is probably the color that I have the most of in my nail polish collection, so it was a little hard to decide which one I was going to do. Would it be dark purple? light purple? bright? muted? I finally landed on Orly Fowl Play, which I searched several Ultas for and finally snagged, only to wear once since then. It's a really awesome polish that I need to wear more often! It's a dark royal purple jelly with holographic flakie glitter in, as well as some silver shimmer. This polish builds up to opacity after two coats.

This polish is seriously one-of-a-kind. As soon as the first coat went on, I felt like my nails were becoming a work of art. The flakes shift from orange to green in the light. Against the shimmery dark purple base, it looks like a galaxy. It's one of the few Orly polishes I own, but I highly recommend you pick this up if you still can!

Artificial light to show the flakie color shift

NOTD - Unintentional Chicago Bears mani?

These nails started out honoring my brother's request for a "blurple" nail polish. My mind immediately jumped to OPI Russian Navy. I love this color, and I don't wear it enough. It's a lovely dark navy blue base, but what makes it special is the pinky-purple shimmer running through it. It's unnoticeable indoors, but when the sun hits it, it glows.

Then, I was browsing through nail blogs, and I saw this amazing manicure. Chevron or V-gap manis are my favorite type of nail art because they are so easy and they allow you to experiment with different color combinations. Plus, they make my nails look longer and narrower, which is always a plus :)

I loved the olive green and glitter combination that Nailside used, but I had literally just finished my blurple mani! I didn't want to immediately remove the Russian Navy loveliness from my nails just yet. I dug through my stash to see what color would look good with it. I decided to go with OPI DS Classic, a beige-tan holographic glitter, for the V. To add a splash of contrasting color, I decided to outline the V with American Apparel Lopez Canyon, a pumpkin-orange creme one-coater.

V-gap mani using OPI Russian Navy, OPI DS Classic, and American Apparel Lopez Canyon

I used the Orly detail brush to outline the V with DS Classic, then used the OPI brush to fill it in. I layered two coats of DS Classic to build up opacity. I wasn't too concerned with keeping this part very neat, because I then used the Orly striping brush to line the edges of the V with Lopez Canyon, covering up any messiness. I really like the way this mani turned out! I can't wait to go out in the sun tomorrow to let it really come to life!

Do you ever try nail art, or do you just keep it simple with one color?