Butter London - All Hail The Queen

Good morning, readers!

I received a bunch of Butter London nail polishes a few weeks ago through a new website called Coterie. They set up beauty offers, similar to Groupon. I saw the deal for Butter London - 3 polishes, plus a topcoat for $36. Not bad! Someone on Reddit posted 2 coupon codes for the deal, so I got 2 sets.

All Hail the Queen was my favorite, and the color I immediately set my sights on. I wasn't too familiar with Butter London beforehand, so I wasn't too sure of their colors, but I still have never seen a color like All Hail the Queen.

I didn't even bother cleaning up this mani before taking pictures of it. I was so excited to show off this color! All Hail the Queen is a holographic nude - I have holos and I have nudes, but this is the only color I have that combines them. It's totally weird, but somehow it works. 

It's so shimmery. Sorry about my gnarly cuticles, I went upstate last weekend and the cold is killing them. I just got my hands on some CND Solar Oil though so hopefully it works out the way I've read!

This is 3 coats with Butter's Hardwear topcoat over them. It's not really a mannequin hands color, but AHTQ is a really nice nude regardless. In the shade, you can see how the holo sorta disappears - I bet this would be a really good office color. I loved putting this color on - It really was like butter. 2 coats was just a little less opaque than I wanted for my swatches, but it would have been sufficient otherwise.

Overall, I really like All Hail the Queen. It's a really unique color, and I'm glad I chose it! 

Butter London nail polishes retail for $14 at www.butterlondon.com.

Illamasqua - Creator

Have you ever seen a polish and decided you had to have it, no questions asked?

Welcome to my extreme lemming for Creator.

Illamasqua is sort of a new brand for me. I knew of them because of Scrangie (I think...) but never had the money to blow on their polishes. I love them all - I'm definitely getting Baptiste next. The thing is, Baptiste can wait. I saw someone swatch Creator sometime last week, and I was immediately enamored. My go-to polishes are always neutrals, and more often than not a variation of black. I love black polish. Black polish pretty much embodies everything I have ever felt about beauty - It's sexy, it's deep, it's rebellious. It's the one color Bobbi Brown (who, not for nothing, always felt like someone of my mom's type) said to never paint our nails. And guess what?

I. Love. Black. Polish.

I like to feel sexy! I like to be deep. And most of all, I am certainly a rebel.

Creator is the perfect girly black polish. It's got tons of silver glitter, and I saw some holo-y looking stuff in there too. It applies like a dream and everything is better with some good old Seche Vite.

It's a little blurry, but you can see a little more of the color shift.

Gorgeous. I fell in love with Creator as soon as I heard about it, and probably would have bought it even if I didn't have store credit at Sephora, haha. I know it seems like a lot, but Creator isn't really similar to any other polish I own so I felt like it was certainly worth it.

Remember how I said black polish was deep? Here's the depth I was talking about. Some of the silver glitter gets trapped in between layers of polish. It reminded me of Essie's Starry Starry Night.

I used 2 coats of Creator underneath Seche Vite. It went on like butter, even though without a topcoat it felt super gritty because of the sparkle. Obviously, taking it off was sort of a hassle - I definitely worked hard getting all that glitter off. Break out the acetone for this one, girls.

Illamasqua polishes retail for $14 at Sephora.