A Makeup & Beauty Blog – Lipglossiping

You’d be easily forgiven if you thought that Butter London Marbs had been released alongside one of the brand’s Winter collections… after all, we’re pretty used to seeing golden metallics shine at Christmas.  But no, in their usual “sod what the rest of the industry are doing” kinda way, Butter London saw fit to release this golden wonder last Summer and it just about works.

Although obviously a rather brash yellow-gold in hue, there’s a certain amount of bronziness to it that makes you appreciate how well it would work with a sunkissed tan.  Something my milk-bottle skin is sadly, unlikely to realise this Summer.

The finish is in fact, startlingly bright with an incredible metallic foil that gives an almost reflective-like quality to the finished product.  I’d generally expect anything so full of shine to be unforgiving over nail ridges but this one manages to disguise the various bumps and peels across my nail beds.

Summer, winter… whatever the season, Marbs is probably the best gold polish I own, especially when it comes to delivering a fully opaque finish in a quick and simple two coats.

Butter London Marbs is priced at £11.95 and available to buy online from powderrooms.com

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As much as I admire a pretty metallic nail polish, they can be the devil for revealing flaws across the nail bed.  Champers from Butter London is no exception and it rudely broadcast my peeling index nail (on the other hand) to all and sundry.

When a polish leaves you feeling so exposed, it can be hard to muster much love for it but despite this, Champers has something very special working for it in its favour.

It’s simply a bloody beautiful shade that would suit every skintone.

It’s described as a rose-gold metallic shimmer…. and in my opinion, pushes the description boundaries a little with the “rose gold”.  I don’t think it’s quite warm enough to qualify and has a subtle silver flash that contradicts the overall impression… of course, this is great if you struggle with warmer tones against your skin but I just wouldn’t quite put this one into the obvious rose gold category.

Especially not when you compare it to something like Butter London’s incredibly beautiful pink/gold combo that is Rosie Lee for example.

Application was good and the polish needed a maximum of three coats to achieve full opacity and removal was generously easy considering the micro particles of shimmer that run through the shade.

Butter London Champers is priced at £11.95 and available to buy online from www.powderrooms.com

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This sparkly little number from Butter London looks great in the bottle.  A blitz of golden glitter, suspended in a clear base.  But when all is said, done, and painted… I’m left feeling distinctly underwhelmed by this one.  Take a look for yourselves…

Now, I’m all for a bit of understated glamour, don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I need it to look like the interior of the Blackpool Tower Ballroom on Strictly nights before I coo over a bit of sparkle.

However… let’s be honest, I could have snorted from Leila’s stash and phyically sneezed more glitter in a single coat.

Sponging the polish on results in a slightly-more-mpressive topper but with the number of golden glittered top coats available across the market, this is one I’d leave on the shelves.

Butter London Stratford Honey is available to buy online, priced at £11.95 from powderrooms.com

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Have you seen the square crumpets that Asda do? Oh my… they’re huge and fill the toaster to the edges…crying out for a slathering of butter, jam, nutella or whatever gets your taste buds excited in the morning!

I can’t have them at the moment because anything that tastes deliciously carby in the mornings makes my obstetrician shake his head at me.  And so, instead of a hot, buttery treat… I’ll have to make do with this tasty morsel of another kind…

Butter London’s Crumpet was released last year as part of the brand’s Starkers collection, a trio of nudes to suit most skintones.  Of the three, crumpet is the middle-toned shade… and as you can see, looks fairly happy sitting against my uber-cool skintone.

The brand describe this one as a “warm caramel creme” and it’s opaque in a couple of coats.  I find wear to be pretty standard throughout the Butter London range and I easily get 5-days before the tip wear begins to appear.  Of course, with shades such as these, this isn’t hugely noticeable even when it does set in.

Butter London Crumpet is priced at £11.95 and available to buy online from powderrooms.com

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Autumn 2013 saw Butter London release Giddy Kipper, a vibrant blue polish with a hidden shimmer that seemed somehow better-suited to Summer than Fall (as did the rest of the Autumn collection).  It reminded me of the blue seas and skies that us UK’ers could only dream of at that time of year.

On paper, it should have been beautiful… in other people’s swatches… I’m still mesemerised.  But both times I’ve worn it, I’ve been a little disappointed!

Now, don’t get me wrong… it’s a beautiful blue.  But, BUT… I’m really missing out on the extra dimension from its hidden shimmer.  In order to appreciate this beauty in the same way that other (U.S. bloggers) have been able to do, you need a good sprinkling of direct sunshine.

There’s nothing wrong with that, a delicate holo will only show its true colours when the sun has got his hat on!  But I think I’ll be putting this one away for the Winter and Spring and bringing it back out for an outing once June rolls around, then… and only then will I really be able to appreciate this little number for its hidden surprises!

Application was fine, a two-coater… nothing unusual to report with the formula, your standard solid Butter London fare!

Butter London’s Giddy Kipper is priced at £11.95, and is available to buy online from powderrooms.com

What’s been your favourite blue this season?

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Is there room in your collection for a pale apricot creme nail polish?

Butter London’s Shandy from last year’s Starkers collection delivered a trio of nudes and this one is an extremely pale hue which leans warmer than neutral.  It would make a great nude shade for fellow sun-dodgers who have less pink in their skin-tones than I do.

On me, it’s a little stark because it’s yellow-tones stand out against my skin but it’s not unnervingly so and thanks to a great formula, it was easy to build this one up to full opacity in three coats.

The only thing I wasn’t sure about was that as wear-time increased, it began to look a little dirty in a nicotine-kinda way.  However, as an ex-smoker, I may well be a little more sensitive to this than others!

Butter London Shandy is priced at £11.95 and available to buy online from powderrooms.com

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I’m watching the poor postman out the window in his flourescent orange windcheater. He’s got an armful of a envelopes and is being blown all over the place… I’d have even more sympathy if he’d already passed my flat but I’m guessing that a couple of those envelopes might belong to me… so hurry it along mister.  It’s wild out there today, truly horrible and from what I read on Twitter, our capital city has gone into a transportation meltdown thanks to a number of tube strikes across the network.  Nice week for it.

So, in a bid to inject a little calm and tranquility into an otherwise turbulent week, let me introduce you to a polish from Butter London’s Summer 2013 collection.  A collection that was based mostly upon metallics, except for this little odd-one-out.  Butter London Poole is a dusky aqua blue with a hint of green… it’s namesake, a town not far down the coast from me, is an absolutely beautiful place to go in the Summer and the birthplace of LUSH Cosmetics dontchano?

What a lovely shade eh?  Not entirely undupe-able but very pretty nonetheless.  The formula was ok, not one of Butter’s best… it needed a bit of smoothing and lacked the nice, even flow that most of their polishes provide.  Opacity was good in two coats, I thought it might need three but the second coat pulled it all together.

Butter London Poole is priced at £11.95 and available to buy online from powderrooms.com

What shades are  you loving at the moment, do I need to prise your fingers away from your Winter staples yet?

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Oh, I can’t take it any longer! It’s so dreary! Don’t get me wrong, I’m not Summer’s biggest fan… but c’mon, give a girl a break! I’ve got some gorgeous, suede boots that I haven’t been able to wear for about two-months thanks to my lack of initiative in getting them scotchgarded**

Not only that but I had to wade through a field of mud picking Leila up from school yesterday after the wind had uprooted a monster tree onto the path and to add insult to injury, the workmen chopping it into teeny, tiny pieces weren’t even hot.  No 3pm Diet Coke break for any of us Mums, just a bloody quagmire to wade through.

So I’m taking it upon myself to Spring things up a bit with this cheerful little number from Butter London.  Molly Coddled is from last Spring’s “Sweetie Shop” collection and has the perfect amount of chalkiness to keep it looking fresh without pushing into starkness territory.

The more astute, or simply fashion-aware among us may also be getting seal-clappy about the fact that this lavender orchid would work nicely with the current Pantone Color of the Year.  If you give a shit about that sort of thing.

The formula is superb on this one with no patchiness or streaking like you’d often get with pastels.  I definitely recommend picking this one up if you’re feeling a little Spring-resistant like me today.

Butter London Molly Coddled is priced at £11.95 and available to buy online from www.powderrooms.com

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** 1st world problems

I don’t care what the newspapers are saying, put down those pastel shades ‘cos it ain’t Spring yet!  Until I see a daffodil or tulip with my own eyes, we’re still firmly in the depths of Winter as far as I’m concerned.  I have an odd love/hate relationship with pastels anyway so I’m not gonna be grumbling about a couple more months of Winter trends.

Talking Winter trends, here’s a lovely top-coat from Butter London.  It’s all holographic n’ stuff.

In the photo above, I sponged the top coat over the tips… graduating the density on the way down toward the cuticle, it’s much easier than it sounds; You just need a high-density makeup sponge (you can pick up bags of them in Poundland/99p shops) before simply stippling the glitter over your existing polish.  I can’t even tell you how much easier it is doing it this way than trying to graduate the polish smoothly with a brush.

The above swatch doesn’t pick up the holographic sparkle too well, you really need to be a little out-of-focus to appreciate the fairy light-esque quality of this polish, so if you could all just go cross-eyed for a moment, that would be great.  Failing that, here’s an instagram which shows off the sparkle a little better.

As with all glitters, removal isn’t the highlight of my day, but the particles aren’t too chunky and to be fair, didn’t pose enough of a problem to send me reaching for the tin-foil.

Butter London Stardust Overcoat is available to buy online from powderrooms.com, priced at £11.95

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Is it purple? Is it blue? Neither, this is AUBERGINE bitch!  Well, kinda…

It also happens to be a one-coat wonder, unless you’re ridiculously meticulous and couldn’t possibly leave it at that.  Me?  I left it at that.  The finish is smooth and glossy and application harks back to some of Butter London’s best from a couple of years back.  When you’re dealing with bold colours, you really appreciate a faultless application and this can unquestionably be described as an easy-to-work-with polish.

Butter London Bramble was released as part of the Holiday 2013 Illusionists collection alongside a trio of top-coats and I’ll be blogging it again, combined with one of the top coats from the set: Stardust, which gives a wondrous, galaxy-esque finish.

I’m loving these chic darker shades at the moment, especially on shorter nails, what colours are you loving at the minute?

Butter London Bramble is available to buy online from powderrooms.com, priced at £11.95

In another completely-inappropriate-shade-for-the-season, today I’m sporting Butter London’s Kerfuffle.  A word that I can’t actually say without immediately thinking of Lou from Little Britain’s Lou and Andy.

Kerfuffle is a delicate pink-peach creme with a glossy finish in a bright (but not too bright) base.  Application was fine, three coats for full opacity with a formula that didn’t disappoint.  It’s a soft, pretty-looking shade that should complement most skin-tones nicely.  The chances of this pairing up with tanned toes as we approach Winter is unlikely, but should it get the chance… I think it would look very nice!

Butter London Kerfuffle is priced at £11.95 and available to buy online from powderrooms.com

When I was younger, I lived by the seaside… like, right on the seaside.  And whenever my Nan used to come for a holiday, she’d pick me up from school and walk me down to the arcades.  I must have spent summer after summer on the pier, playing the one-arm bandits with her.  Being the nice kind of Nan that she was, she’d feed the machine with money and let me sit on a stool beside her pulling the lever.

Fruit machines aren’t like that nowadays… instead, they’re high-tech, expertly programmed things that make a god-awful racket in the corner of a pub.  I say bring back the more genteel OXO ones… and limit people’s spends to 2p a go.  Them were the days (I remember when all this was fields etc. etc.)

Anyway, Butter London’s interpretation of a Fruit Machine, is like no fruit machine I’ve ever encountered.  Some of these names are a bit bloody random aren’t they?  What does pepto-pink have to do with anything?!

Fruit Machine is a pale bubblegum pink with a bright white base that keeps this colour popping right off your fingernails! It looks a little chalky to me but in a mod-esque, edgy kinda way rather than a cheap nail polish kinda way.

The coverage is pretty thick but the formula, completely workable and I was done after two coats.  Fruit Machine is one of those happy Spring colours (hello Autumn!) that keeps your focus firmly on your fingertips.

Butter London Fruit Machine is priced at £11.95 and available to buy online from powderrooms.com