Butter London Jack The Lad: Christmas Green Glitter

This year, I happen to be pretty busy during the Christmas season, so unlike previous years, I didn't get the time to do any Christmas nail art. But, I did manage to squeeze in a little Christmas cheer on my nails! Behold, probably the most Christmassy green ever, Butter London's Jack The Lad!

Butter London Jack The Lad: My Christmas green this year.

Butter London isn't actually a UK-based brand, despite the brand name and the colloquial British names. Butter London is actually based in Seattle, USA, and if you look at their About Us page, you'll notice that also, the top C-suites of the brand are all people from the US, too. It seems like the only vaguely British thing about the brand is that was founded by a British person, Sasha Muir, who now lives in the USA. I've never pointed this out before, but as the brand picks up in popularity, I realized I was coming across people who actually thought it was a British brand (doesn't help that esteemed fashion publications like Elle UK, no less get it wrong, too), and they seem so surprised to think that a US brand could capitalize on the world's Anglophilia. It's not the first time I've seen brands trying to masquerade as coming from another country - if you recall, my post on Elianto cosmetics noted that the Korean stylings of the brand really belied a Malaysian origin.


Butter London Jack The Lad: Just so you know, Butter London isn't actually a British brand.
But let's proceed. Brand image and marketing aside, I've honestly been slower than most nail bloggers to take up Butter London with significant enthusiasm. Part of it is the price. $25 for a nail polish is just not really splurge-friendly - not that it has stopped me from racking up a tiny Butter London stash of my own. The other part of it is the fact that, well, Butter Londons seem to vary highly in quality. Some shades are really excellent, some are four-coats-and-there's-still-VNL kind of less excellent.

Cirque Epoch Review and Swatch: Deep, dark duochrome nail polish!

As I might have mentioned in a previous NOTD (nail of the day) post, yes I am absolutely into indie nail polish right now! One of the brands I've been trying out is Cirque (and if you've seen some of my Instagram posts you'll see some of those bottle shots and NOTDS already), and the polish I wanted to show you today is Cirque Epoch! I bought these online from Luxola when they were having a sale (although I rarely buy from them now - they're kind of overpriced compared to alternatives such as Mei Mei Signatures).

Cirque Epoch: Here it looks forest green, but the duochrome becomes more apparent in different lights and angles.

Cirque Epoch is a forest green glass-fleck-ish polish, mostly, but it does have very lovely duochrome in the right lights. I get blue and purple from it. It's this flash of other colours that made me swoon for this polish. I had to work pretty darn hard to capture the duochrome, because the lighting and my camera just weren't cooperating with me. I have no idea how those other nail bloggers do it, but darn they are good.

Edamame Nails! AKA China Glaze Westside Warrior

Don't you love it when your nails match your food? What, you mean you've never had that happen to you? :P I had painted my nails with China Glaze Westside Warrior, and also, I happened to have lunch at a Japanese restaurant. And one of the things we had was edamame! Yummy, yummy edamame! And I couldn't help snapping this photo with my iPhone, resulting in crappy iPhone quality pic I'm now sharing with you.

Look, my nails match my food!

St Patricks Day Nail Art With Glitter!

Remember my failed St Patrick's Day gradient nail art the other day? Since I wasn't totally happy it, I decided to fix it up the way most of us nailphiles do - add on a layer of glitter! Aaaannnd, I think it just got better! Glitter FTW!

St Patrick's Day Gold and Green Gradient Manicure!

St Patrick's Day is coming up, and I always love any excuse to wear green! This time, for my St Patrick's Day nails, I decided to attempt a gradient manicure - sideways!

For this look I used three shades - a darker green, a lighter green, and a gold. The darker green was Etude House Petit Darling Nails GR609, the lighter colour was Nicole by OPI One Time Lime (OMG Yes I actually own a Justin Bieber polish! Well it was on sale and I was in the US on holiday...), and the gold was Collection 2000 (now known as Collection Cosmetics) Aztec Gold (which I really love and have worn before as an NOTD by itself).