It's time for another edition of Respect The Stache!! Today's post is about one of my all time favorite brands.  They're 3Free, cruelty free, vegan, US based and have awesome names! Plus they apply like butter, last ages and play very nicely with my Seche Vite.  Have you guessed the brand yet?  Here's one last hint for you: they are Seattle based but have a British founder.  Still haven't gotten it? 

 It's

I LOVE this brand and I can still remember my very first two: Dosh and Victoriana!  Of course, lovely and fabulous as they are butter LONDON's do have a slightly higher price level than most of the polishes I buy: $14 a pop.  So I haven't amassed quite as many as some other brands! But it's coming along rather nicely if I do say so!  So here we go....I've broken these down by collection to make it a little easier for you to see! :)

We'll start with the Spring/Summer of 2009 Collection called Fashionista’s Favourites. I'm missing one from this collection (Blowing Raspberry's) but I have the other four.  They are: Cheeky Chops, Artful Dodger, The Old Bill and Muggins.

Moving forward to Fall of 2009 we have Rosie Lee, Scoundrel and British Racing Green.  The other two in this collection were Minger and Pearly Queen, neither of which really interests me.  These collections seemed a little mismatched in the beginning. But I digress.

Some more sort of random colors, these are all core as far as I know. We have: Big Smoke, Aston and Branwen's Feather.  Then on the end I have Fishwife which is an online exclusive.  It should have been in the last picture but I sort of forgot. :/

Some glitters! West End Wonderland, Chancer, Henley Regatta and then a metallic: Diamond Geezer.

Today I have another Dollish Polish for you.  When I saw that there was a series of polishes dedicated to The Legend of Zelda, you know I was all over that! I still remember getting my very first game system, The original NES.  Mind you, I was 13, my dad FINALLY caved to our requests for one and snagged it at a yard sale and my friends had already been playing the crap out of the PlayStation for two years. But we loved it.  We started out with something like four games.  One was Super Mario Brothers 3/Duck Hunt/Track and Field.  It's actually a pretty common game but the great part was we actually had a Duck Hunt gun AND the Track and Field mat so we could fully enjoy all three.  Except for the part where if you ran on the mat too hard the system crashed. :/  At any rate, we also had a Chipmunk game which we failed at miserably because teamwork was essential and we just didn't have it.  And then there was that shiny gold cartridge.  The Legend of Zelda.  LOVED. THAT. GAME.  We had no idea how to play it or where to go and my sister and I spent endless hours with graph paper making castle maps to try to figure a way to beat it.  We failed.  But years later I watched my husband beat the whole damn thing in roughly an hour.  Stupid boys. Anyway...here we have Hylian Princess.  You'll probably notice in the pic above that there is a random blue hex glitter on my ring finger.  After carefully examining my bottle, I decided this glitter must have been an oops because there isn't another to be found.

Hylian Princess is a mix of tiny purple squares, various sizes of purple hexes, large white hexes and  large gold hexes and squares.  It's A LOT going on but it looks just amazing.  I layered it over butterLONDON Muggins for just a bit of color to the background.  I really love this one.  I love the color combo but I also loved that it went on so easily. All of my nails have a little bit of each type of glitter and I didn't have to fish for larger pieces.  It's smooth on the nail, and it wasn't thick and goopy. Gorgeous.  Stay tuned tomorrow for the other half of this amazing duo!  For good measure...here's a close-up pic of her royal highness:

Perfection. Thanks for following along!! 

Were you a gamer growing up? What was your favorite one?

Day two is here!! If you missed yesterday's post, I'm in the middle of a challenge week using the color blue.  To challenge myself, personally, I've added a rule that I can't remove any art from my mani.  I have to add to what is already there.  The challenge started yesterday with a base coat of Deborah Lippmann Let's Hear it for the Boy. Today I decided to do some simple stripes.  I used butterLONDON Big Smoke which is a gorgeous dark, shimmery blue to add some fat stripes on each nail.  I thought really hard about matte topcoating this because I LOVE suedes.  But I ultimately decided against it.  I like stripes since they're easy to do and yet they look somewhat elaborate on the nail!  I hope you're enjoying the challenge!  

Check out the first challenge day by clicking here!

 

Don't forget to check out the other members of the Digit-al Dozen's art work for the day!!

At the time I did this mani I considered it a big fail!  It was an attempt to use my brand new butterLONDON polish Lovely Jubbly but once I had the accent nail on I couldn't figure out what to do with the rest of it.  So then I decided (why, I have no idea) to try out some snake print.  I'm thinking that it might have been a good idea to add a second layer of snake print in a darker color over the top of the original...but slightly askew. I used Barry M Silver Foil to make the print and it was just standing out WAY too much on the base of Essence Gabriella.  So...I first tried putting some glitter over it to dull it a bit but without taking too much away from the accent.  You can still see it on my pinkie nail.  I used one swipe of Barry M Pink Iridescence.  But it wasn't giving me the muted effect I wanted.  Then I was going to scrap the whole thing and start over but...LIGHT BULB MOMENT!  I decided to use my new glossy Zoya's! So I swiped a quick coat of Katherine over the silver parts and...voila!! It's a muted purple color and it seems much less disjointed than the flat silver. I also went ahead and added a coat over the Lovely Jubbly.  It muted all the silver and made it a purple/blue/red glitter.  Pretty. :)  I'm still not in love with this but I think it came out really nice and I'm LOVING that the glosses are giving me endless options with my mani's.  One or two coats of any of them can really change up your look.  Even Zoya themselves is getting in on the layer craze by showing you how to turn your summer colors into fall colors with just a few coats of jelly!  I love jellies anyway but I'm telling you guys, you NEED this gloss set.  So in honor of that...and the fact that I completely missed the 500 followers mark!! I'm giving one away!! Watch for it later today and thanks again for following!

OK I'll admit that every time butterLONDON releases a new collection I get the feeling that I NEED them all.  This fall's collection is no exception.  Except that...well...it is.  I went to the store the other day with the full intention of purchasing several polishes from the new OPI Germany collection.  When I got there one of the sales girls was RAVING about the new colors.  I was unimpressed.   I twirled them about in my hands and shined my iPhone flashlight on them (yes I do that. You can never be too sure about polishes in the bottle!), shook them and held them at all angles.  Boring.  So I decided to pass on them, go home and play with the hoards of polish I already have.  Here comes my husband with several familiar little square bottles in his hand, "Have you seen THESE?!" he asks me.  Well, in a word, yes.  But I'm kind of past the point of being impressed by holographic finishes and sparkly glitters.  That said...the polishes he chose are gorgeous.  His picks?  Trustafarian, the stunning polish you see above.  It's a light, sage green laced with linear holographic shimmer.  What I love most about this one is that it doesn't dull in the shade or lose it's luster under topcoat.  Its fabulously stunning AT ALL TIMES. And flawless application which I already expect from butterLONDON.  Also in his hands were Lovely Jubbly, which is no surprise to me since he's a sucker for glitters.  I was stunned at the smoothness of Lovely Jubbly.  I found the color and coverage very similar to the OPI Burlesque polish, Simmer and Shimmer.  But while the OPI polishes are thick and goopy, this one is perfect and smooth.  One coat of Seche Vite took away all grittiness and left it glassy smooth and shiny.  His final choice was Gobsmacked.  While I DO love the color, I have several dupes for it so we swapped it out for Shag, a fabulously decadent copper.  I'll be swatching all of these for you in upcoming posts but for now let's focus on Trustafarian.  I wore it on it's own for two days before I decided to 'jazz it up' a bit with some Essence The Huntsman polish.  I'm SO incredibly in love with the combination.  In the shade the butterLONDON goes green and rainbowy and the Essence lights up with gold and green flakes and glitter.  In the sun Trustafarian lights up like a disco and The Huntsman glitters like a pot of gold. Perfection.  My favorite combo I've done so far!!  I'm including a close-up of the two below so you can see the goodness!!

Thanks for following!! Do you have any of the new butterLONDON's?

Today's mani was a 'good luck' mani for me! I had a big practical test coming up to see if I would be able to go on commission and get out of training for my new job and I wanted to do something that was sort of business in the front, party in the back!  Lol...this mani combines my favorite neutral, professional color with a SUPER fun crazy neon nail.  Surprisingly, it's a look I've seen kind of trending recently.  I decided to matte them all to make it a little bit more off beat and also because it really made the neutral color seem more natural.  I'm still working on keeping polish on my nails on the job and I found that using this color worked out really well since I can tell when it's coming off but it's not super noticeable to the clientele.  At any rate I used butterLONDON Tea With the Queen for the nuetral nails and China Glaze I'm With the Lifeguard for the neon.  :)  Enjoy!!

District Eight's industry is textiles. In the books, Katniss describes District 8 "as an ugly, urban place stinking of industrial fumes, the people housed in run down tenements, barely a blade of grass in sight".  Obviously I'm not doing nail art based on that!  There is also mention in the books that it's a cold district and it is assumed to be a very poor one as well.  Woof and Cecelia are the known tributes though the ones who participate in Katniss's games are not named.  Other people known from the district are Twill, Bonnie, and Commander Paylor (don't worry if you've not read the books and only seen the films, these people are coming!)  The color China Glaze chose for this district was called Dress Me Up and it's a light dusty pinkish shade.  It's actually a lovely color and very flattering as well.  It again, has little to do with the district given the descriptions above BUT it was easier to work with than some of the others! I went simple one this one giving it an easy pattern so that it would resemble cloth.  The pattern was done with butterLONDON Toff.  I liked the subtle color difference and from a distance it really looked more textured than patterned which is the effect I was looking for.  Thanks for following!  

Next up is District Nine: Grain
Or visit the previous district: Lumber

***Don't forget to check out the winner of my Free Swag Giveaway!!***

Zoya: Edyta

Retail Cost: $8

vs.

Retail Cost: $14

Wallis is a polish I've been seeing 'dupes' of a lot over the past few months.  I bought Wallis the second it hit stores and I LOVE it.  The cost is the most common reason I hear from others as to why they haven't bought it yet.  It's so worth it and I'd love to find a dupe so that those of you who don't have $14 to drop on one polish can enjoy the subtle glory of it. But funny enough, when I swatch these polishes next to Wallis, even though they look SO similar in the bottle, I've yet to find one which looks anything similar on the nail. Odd how that happens, no?  So how did Edyta stack up? Well let's see...

Well here we go again.  Wallis is a green/gold color.  It reminds me of a golden apple.  It has a darker green base but a very noticeable olive/gold shimmer going through it.  While Edyta has the same dark green base, the gold shimmer in it is much less compact, much less large and much less noticeable.  It has an overall hunter green kind of appearance and while it shimmers in the sunlight and is very pretty, it just lacks the complexity of Wallis. 

 A close-up picture gives a better idea of what I'm talking about. Edyta is on the left in this picture and Wallis on the right.  If you blow the picture up (and please do!) you'll see that while the base color is very similar, the shimmer is less apparent and more true gold on the Edyta while it's more olive and much more noticeable on the Wallis.  

A super sparkly mani for today because my week is starting out not so super sparkly!  Sparkles make everything better, right?  There are a few things that led to today's color combo.  I wanted to try out my new Barry M Lilac Foil for starters.  It's odd because I have a few 'foil' finish polishes already.  My favorites are the Orly Foil FX line.  Not only are they metallic and shiny but they also have a micro shimmer throughout which makes them just gorgeous on the nail.  The Barry M foils...well...not so much.  They can be streaky, they dry to an odd flat-ish finish, and they're not incredibly shiny OR sparkly on the nail.  They're kind of like the flat, gross side of the roll of aluminum foil!  After three coats and still streaks I decided to cover it up with something more flashy.  Enter Tart with A Heart.  I LOVE this butterLONDON color.  It was part of their holiday collection this year and it's just mesmerizing.  There are all different colors of glitter throughout it, even black, and it looks completely different depending on what color it's used over. I actually quite liked this combination, even if it is lacking in the creativity department!!

Enjoy and thanks for following! :) 

This is my very first attempt at needle marbling.  I think it came out pretty well.  The purple is the needle marble and then to make it a little more festive (and to cover a few mistakes...shhh) I added some silver lines with a striping brush.  I actually really liked this mani and it lasted a few days which is a record for my nails, but it was a bit time consuming since it was my first try.  I'll definitely be trying this technique again in the future though!! Today is my last day of regular nails before I attempt the Purple Crumpet Fairy's 31 Days of Christmas challenge.  This time of year is HELLA hectic for me so I make no promises! But I'll try to do as many as I can. :)

Base is: butterLONDON Muggins

Marble is: Barry M Indigo

So I pretty much totally slacked off on the Halloween nails and I wanted to try to make up for it on Thanksgiving!   When I thought of Thanksgiving the first thing that came to my mind is those handprint turkeys that everyone makes at some point during their childhood. You know, trace your hand, draw feathers on the fingers and a turkey head on the thumb?  So I instantly thought that was what I wanted to do.  But then I kept thinking about it and it seemed like something everyone else would be doing.  So I asked my go-to person (my wonderful husband) what he thought I should do.  He said, 

"Why don't you make your fingers feathers and then do a turkey head on your thumb?" 

So I thought, if both of us think it's a good idea, it must not be half bad!  I searched the web this morning and was surprised that I actually couldn't find any turkey nails like mine.  So I'm glad I chose to do them after all!! Choosing the colors was the hardest part.  I wanted pastels at first but it just didn't jive with the fall vibe so I ended up with red, yellow, green and orange.  I hope you all have a wonderful holiday (those of you who celebrate) and are able to enjoy time with your families! :)

Pinky is: Revlon All Fired Up

Ring is: Barry M Spring Green

Middle is: butterLONDON Cheeky Chops

Index is: butterLONDON Jaffa

Gold on feathers is: Color Club Gingerbread Man

Thumb is: Orly Prince Charming, Orly Orange Punch, Revlon All Fired Up, Ulta Snow White, and Hard Candy The End.

It's time for another edition of Dupes Up! This weeks contenders:

butterLONDON: Wallis from the Winter/Fall 2011 collection.

Retail cost: $14

vs.

Loreal: Owl's Night from the Project Runway Colors Take Flight Collection.

Retail Cost: $5.79

It's starting to look like the color of Fall might be olive green shimmer.  I've seen this same color from butterLONDON, Loreal, Julep, and numerous others recently.  I bought the butterLONDON Wallis when it first came out a few months back and I LOVED it.  Still, how many of the same shade does one collection need?  I skipped signing up for Julep because, even for the $5 start up fee it seemed silly when the polish I was meant to receive was a close relative of Wallis.  So naturally, when everyone started going crazy over Loreal's Owls Night, I remained unimpressed.  I saw it a few times in various stores but always felt the same, "Isn't that JUST like Wallis?"  Well, eventually, I broke down and bought it.  And here's the answer:

In the bottle, they do look quite similar although they are most certainly NOT dupes.  The real question is, dupes or no, is it still necessary to have both in your collection?  Wallis is much more olive than Owls Night.  And it's shimmer is more compact.  A close up reveals the difference:

Owls Night is on the left here.  You can see that it's a deep olive/brown base with golden olive shimmer.  It's not as compact as Wallis and the base is more evident.  Wallis is brighter, greener, and has more compact gold shimmer throughout.  Here's the results on my nails.  These pics are artificial light and no topcoat.

Dupes? Definitely not.  Similar...well, maybe.  But in my opinion they're not even really cousins.  Owls Night could be mistaken for a brown rather than a green (although next to the browns in my collection it looks decidedly olive) while Wallis is unmistakeably green.  Wallis also has an obvious gold flash to it while Owls Night is more of a subtle shimmer.  If you can still find Owls Night, it was part of the Project Runway Colors Take Flight Collection,  it's definitely worth having in your collection.  Both were opaque in two coats and both are shiny and smooth on the nail.  If I could only have one of them, I'd go for Wallis since I feel the color is more unique.  But they're both beautiful!

Thanks for following! What's your favorite color for Fall?

A few weeks ago I went to Michigan for a few days to relax and get some down time.  I needed a mani that was going to not only last for three days but also, that I wouldn't get sick of!  So I perused through my swatch wheels and landed at La Moss.  This color was on my wishlist for a LONG time before I finally snagged it during a BOGO event at Ulta.  In true Ulta salesgirl style, the girl who came to 'assist' me tried to talk me out of La Moss.  She told me it was not pretty on the nail, not dark enough, and not the color of the bottle.  And she tried numerous times to sell me Teddy Girl instead despite the fact that it: a)looks NOTHING like La Moss and is therefore not a good substitution and b) I had already told her a hundred times I already have Teddy Girl.  So I finally made it out of the store with La Moss and then it ended up in my drawer for awhile.  I have to say, it's everything I dreamed it would be.  It's very nearly black and yet still very clearly red.  This is three coats and it's definitely bottle color.  It's also a jelly so it has this nice squishy quality to it which I love.  And it shined like....IT SHINED.  I got SO many compliments on this mani.  The accent nail was a gift I received in a swap.  It's a Sally Hansen nail strip.  I had been wanting to try them and I was stoked to get a set for free.  It was amazingly easy to use and even though it's a glitter it was dead smooth on my nail.  No topcoat needed.  This mani went through three days of rain, freezing weather, wind, driving, and everything in between and there wasn't a chip in sight when I returned home.  Oh and the glitter removal.  A breeze.  You can't beat that!

This is Warm & Fozzie by OPI. It's from the new Muppets collection and honestly, upon seeing the swatches, it was the only one that made me say, "I NEED THAT."  It did not dissapoint.  This is two coats and it's opaque, sparkly, and totally smooth.  You can't tell so much from the picture but it has tiny flecks of red and green and blue and copper and gold and...yeah. There's a lot of colors in there!! When it dries it looks like a copper foil with incredible sparkle factor!  I decided to let it shine and just threw a bit more bling on the tips!  A perfect, easy, fall mani. :)

Enjoy and thanks for following!!

Base is: OPI Warm & Fozzie

Tips are: butterLONDON West End Wonderland

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays.  I love dressing up and being crazy and all the scary things that go along with it.  So I don't know why I've had such a hard time getting motivated to do Halloween themed nails.  I've seen this mummy design on a hundred other blogger's sites and this is my THIRD attempt at it.  I still don't love it but it didn't come out nearly as bad as the other two attempts!! It's much harder than it looks!  I used my Models Own black nail art pen to do the lines for that and the spider web and let me just say, I. LOVE. THIS. PEN.  It's SO easy to use and you can really get some tiny lines with it.  The spider web is my favorite part of this mani.  Oh...and the fact that it glows in the dark! I used the glow in the dark polish UNDER the nail art pen and then again over the white on the eyes so that the design would appear in the dark.  It worked great although it wouldn't photograph for anything! :/  I hope you enjoy the nails and hope everyone is having a great Halloween!! (One more creepy design is on the way :P)

Thanks for following! 

Base is: OPI Skull & Glossbones

Topped that with China Glaze Ghoulish Glow

Black is: Models Own Nail Art Pen in Black

Eyes are: Ulta Snow White

Centers are: butterLONDON La Moss

Then coated the non-designed nails with: Wet & Wild Tangled In My Web

These nails are loosely inspired by a design I saw at Sephora a few weeks back.  They have out a new brochure filled with different nail art that you can do with their products.  Of course, I didn't use their products for this!! But they suggested a red polish over the tips of a leopard nail strip they were selling and then they lined the edges with tear shaped silver gems.  I did the leopard on a metallic background to mimic the shiny 'minx' like strips they had and then used a super glitter to do the 'gems'. Enjoy and thanks for following!!

Base is: Orly Luxe
Tips are: butterLONDON Scoundrel
Leopard print is: Hard Candy The End
Gem dots are: Burlesque Collection by OPI Glow Up Already

Rilakkuma is a toy bear who likes relaxing, sleeping, listening to music, and soaking in hot springs. Sounds like the life, no? His favorite foods are dango, pancakes, omurice and custard pudding.  Some of you hard core Rilakkuma fans might have noticed that in fact, this is Korilakkuma, the female friend of Rilakkuma.  I intended to do Rilakkuma's face on my thumb and somehow I never got around to it!  I also somehow forgot to do the outline on her mouth. :/ In any event the nails were still a hit! I got a lot of compliments on them and they're probably the easiest design I've done yet.  Just a few dots and two lines! I hope you enjoy them and thanks so much for following! :)

Base on all nails but accent is Barry M Mushroom

Base on accent nail is Essie Sand Tropez. 

Button is butterLONDON Saucy Jack and Ulta Snow White

Eyes, nose and mouth are China Glaze Ingrid

Top coat is Seche Vite

Base coat: butterLONDON Toff

Flowers: butterLONDON Teddy Girl and Cheeky Chops

Accent Nail: Base buterLONDON Teddy Girl.

Flowers: butterLONDON Toff, Cheeky Chops