Butter London Two Fingered Salute

Hello girls! How have you been? Is summer in full swing where you live or are you taking the coats out for winter like myself? From what I've read on Twitter some of you are having winter weather still well into spring. I hope that, wherever you are, you're making the most of it by wearing pretty nail polish ;)

Today I want to share with you another of my Butter London beauties (I kinda fell off the face of the Earth doing these, huh?). This is the beautiful Two Fingered Salute. I saw it blogged from A Polish Addict and fell in love. So. Hard.

Butter London in unavailable where I live (which by now you probably think it's Siberia because of our crappy nail polish selection) but I got this one thanks to a kind penpal/nailmail buddy. But enough rambling, on to the polish!

Two Fingered Salute is a dusty, kinda like a seafoam, green base with tiny shimmer that shines copper, pink and gold. It's truly outstanding.

Here I think you're seeing two coats over my regular basecoat (Essence 24/7) and topcoat (Essence Better than Gel Nails Top Sealer). Sorry, it's been a while since I took these pictures heh.

I do remember that the formula was really easy to work with, like with all the butter London polishes I've tried so far. I love how it looks like some sort of subtle speckled effect, the color shifting of the shimmer adds so much to it too. Next, in the macro, you can kinda see all the sparkly colors the shimmer turns.

Butter London retails for $14 in the US, for 15ml bottles, at places like Ulta and Nordstrom. They're also cruelty-free, yay!

I hope you enjoyed this simple mani/review. Next one will be a totally different thing, as I kinda fell off the Butter London bandwagon, but I do want to finish up this series of reviews at some point, so stay tuned.

Butter London Victoriana

Hi guys! I'm back again to share another Butter London, as suggested by Kumiko who wanted to see Victoriana next from my Butter London Haul.

Victoriana is a muted/dusky teal filled with tiny silver microglitter. It's probably my favorite of the ones I've used so far, having worn it twice in the few weeks.

For my mani I used two coats of Victoriana over a base of Essence's 24/7 basecoat and topped it with Better Than Gel Nails Top Sealer from the same brand. Formula-wise it was good, a bit draggy on the first coat but it evened out nicely, and totally opaque, on the second

The base color is tricky, not quite blue and not quite green, and I love these kind of colors. The silver microglitter adds such a nice depth and "oomph" to the look. Just check out the macro:

BAM! This one is a winner in my book and total Top 20 material.

Thanks for reading and see in the next Butter London review :)

Nail Mail: Butter London & Fiddlesticks Review

Hi girls! Long time, no see, sorry about the hiatus, between summer vacation, a road trip and a couple more things I did felt much like taking and editing pics of my manis (though I still kept painting my nails regularly).

Anyway, today I want to share with you the first of 5 Butter London nail polishes that I recently got thanks to a couple of lovely ladies that got them for me in the US and sent them my way.

The shades I picked were: Fiddlesticks, Knackered, Disco Biscuit, Victoriana and Two Fingered Salute. I've already worn and loved Victoriana and Disco Bicuit, but I didn't take pics. I did take some of today's mani, which is Fiddlesticks.

Butter London Fiddlesticks was released in the 2012 Holiday collection ands is  a magenta jelly base filled with tiny pink glitter.

It applies really well and is opaque in 2 coats, for this mani I used the Essence Peel Off Basecoat (will come back to let you know how did that go) and 1 coat of Gelous and one coat of Essence Better than Gel Nails Top Sealer (new favorite top coat!) to top it off and leave it smooth as glass.

So, to be my first Butter Londons, I'm extremely happy with this new brand. The formulas on the ones I've tried so far are excellent and Fiddlesticks was no exception. A little hungry, like most glitters, but not bad.

Which one would you like to see next?

Thanks for reading and keeping up with me :)

Christmas Skittles

Merry Christmas everyone! :D I hope you are all having a wonderful time with your loved ones.

Today's post will be short because I'm spending time with my family. Being that Christmas for me is in summer I wasn't feeling very festive until last minute. Just yesterday I painted my nails with a bunch of designs I found on Tumblr/Pinterest (so I take no credit for them).

I used a bunch of nail polishes for this nail art. The red is Zoya Sooki, the white is Finger Paints Papier Maché, the greens are OPI Jade is the new Black and Jordana Grass green. The brown is a new one I got from Essence the other day, Wanna Say Hello (we finally got the new Colour&Go selection, wee!)

I also want to thank all my readers for the constant support and kind words in comments or Twitter. I love you all <3 p="p">

Pastel Leopard Print

Hi guys! How are you doing? I'm still stressing over finals over here (Need. Summer. Break..) but still squeezing in some time for manis. Since it's summer I haven't been feeling very Christmass-y (we haven't even put out decorations), so today's mani is nothing at all holiday-related, but still cute (if I do say so myself).

Today's mani started because I wanted to combine Essie Splash of Grenadine and Lapis of Luxury. I've always loved how these two shades look together, no surprise since they were both released in the same collection (Essie Resort 2010, the only collection I wish I had whole *sigh*).

Also, I've been wanting to try out a leopard print manicure, and one thing lead to another...

The base of my manicure is two coats of Splash of Grenadine in almost all my nails. As an accent, I painted three coats of Lapis of Luxury on my index and thumb. Of these two, Lapis of Luxury has the trickier formula, but it's not impossible to work with.

I used a dotting tool for the spots: with one end I added some spots of Splash of Grenadine over the nails painted with blue and after that was dry I used the other end to add the black spots with Essence Galactic Black.

Overall, I loved this look and it was really simple to do the spots. I look forward to make a full leopard mani next time.

What's your favorite nail art look? Share it on the comments :)

Thanks for reading!

Oldie but Goodie

Hi everyone! How are you all doing? Today I'm sharing a very summery mani featuring one of my favorite nail polishes ever, top 20 material for me. It might not be because it's super interesting, but it has a special place in my heart as it was one of the first nail polishes I ever owned.

Today I'm showing you two coats of OPI Flower to Flower with one dabbed coat of Lynnderella Connect the Dots.

I don't know what is it with summer that makes me want to bust out all my pink colors. This week is OPI's Flower to Flower from the Summer Flutter collection (Summer 2010). Flower to Flower is a bubblegum pink with some pretty silver shimmer (it looks like a shimmery version of OPI Strawberry Margarita)

To spice it up a bit I took out my Connect the Dots by Lynnderella, which I had not used much since "the drama". Connect the Dots is a mix of black and white glitter in several sizes and shapes in a clear base.

I've had this combo on the back of my head for a while. For some reason I thought Connect the Dots would look really cool over pink. And it does! I love the look :)

Glitters look awesome under macro, don't they?

I don't tend to consciously follow seasons with my nail polish (since it's sunny most of the year here I can rock holos even on winter), but you'll probably be seeing more bright manis from me. I just love happy colors for summer.

What's your favorite summer shade?

PS: Please excuse my tipwear, I had been wearing this mani for a day when I took pics. Also, ack, macro is not gentle with my cutes *sad*

Punk Gradient

Hi all! How are you doing? I'm doing fine, but busy. I'm really close to the end of the semester, so it gets really chaotic really fast. Also, not fun, but my last final is on December 28th. Boo.

Anyway, on to more fun topics. Today I have a gradient mani to share with you. Gradients are my favorite way to extend the life of a mani, in cases I don't have time to change my current one, but I already grew bored of it.

Today's mani started with China Glaze Strawberry Fields (which was my first nail polish reviewed here). I love this pink glassfleck and it's a perfect shade for summer (which already got here!).

But I couldn't leave it alone and in less that a day I added a gradient with Essence Galactic Black (it's a shimmery black, but the shimmer is almost invisible in real life). It seemed a little plain so I thought: "Uhm, what can I use to brighten this up?"

Glitter, of course!

The glitter is Love & Beauty Crystal/Multi by Forever 21 (don't we all love the creativity of F21's polishes?). This was also sent to me by the awesome Eileen (since there are no F21 in my country). I loved this polish because the polish is shredded in irregular bits instead of a regular shape, it's really unique in my opinion.

For creating the glitter gradient I just carefully dabbed over the color gradient. I called this "punk gradient" because, somehow, the shredded glitters and the color scheme reminds me of Daft Punk. Yeah, I don't even know how my mind works.

On the macro you can appreciate the irregular shredded glitter and the pastel colors. I really liked this mani and would like to recreate it sometime.

What was the latest mani that you just loved?

Thanks for reading!