Butter London Pimms and Lynnderella Connect The Dots

Butter London Pimms

Here's a self indulgent post about some of my favourite things - yellow polish and black and white glitter! My newest yellow polish and my oldest black and white glitter, to be exact. This is Butter London Pimms. It's not a new shade, I think it was from BL's autumn 2013 collection, but when I saw it in my local Boots last week it just seemed so bright and perfect for summer I had to buy it! I don't have a yellow quite like it - I usually go for paler, lemony yellows, greenish yellows, mucky yellows or mustard yellows - avoiding primary yellows because they look kind of 'eggy' and I don't like them on my hands. But this is perfect! The application was fantastic too - this is two coats with Seche Vite topcoat. Much as I love yellow, many yello polishes can be a real pain to apply.

Butter London Pimms

So I wore it on its own for a couple of days then I added black and white glitter. I love black and white glitter, and I have quite a collection of them now - hexagonal ones, mixed shapes, tiny glitters, some with bar glitter, dots, squares, some with highlights of other colours, or background shimmer, or bits of holo - you name it, there's a variant of black and white glitter out there somewhere and chances are I own it, lol! But this is the one that started them all - Lynnderella Connect The Dots. I was amazed when I first saw pictures of this - I'd never seen anything like it before. This was back in the day when Lynnderella sold direct from her blog and people got together for group orders... lot of water under the bridge since then. But this was my first black and white glitter, and my first indie polish in fact! There are other black and white glitters I probably like more now, but this is the original, and I still have a soft spot for it.

Butter London Pimms with Lynnderella Connect The Dots

One coat of Connect The Dots over my existing mani with BL Pimms, with a coat of Gelous to smooth and Seche Vite to finish.

Butter London Pimms with Lynnderella Connect The Dots

All products in this post are from my personal collection and were purchased by me.

R&R Lacquers Assemble Collection - MkII and Romanov

R&R Lacquers Romanov

I've a couple of lovely polishes from R&R Laquers I've been wearing this week - I saw a notification that Rachel and Rebecca are about to release an Assemble part II collection, and I realised I've not worn all the first Assemble collection. Oops. And I feel especially bad about this because when I bought Smash (which is one of my favourite polishes this year - a fabulous green with flakies and magenta glitter) the girls sent me samples of the other polishes in the collection. I wore one of the glitters, Steve, as part of the nail art design in this post.

This one is Romanov - a gorgeous black jelly with small holographic copper glitter. China Glaze Fortune Teller has always been a favourite of mine, but I'm afraid Romanov completely blows it out of the water! This is two coats of Romanov with a coat of black (American Apparel Hassid) as a base and Seche Vite to smooth the whole lot out.  I've included some fuzzy shots so you can see the colours reflecting in the glitter...

The last polish in this collection is called MkII. It's a combination of red and yellow-gold dots and hexes in a clear base; some of the red dots are holographic.

R&R Lacquers Mk II over RBL Footpath

I layered MkII over Rescue Beauty Lounge Footpath, which is a fab mustard shade, worth a swatch on its own. This is just one coat, no topcoat. ONE coat. For a yellow - that's awesome. And I love the colour. I know these sorts of colours aren't to everyone's taste, but I love them.

 RBL Footpath

And a few more with MkII over the top... so you can see the colour shifts in the holo glitters. This is one coat of R&R Lacquers MkII, a coat of Sinful Over The Top to smooth the glitter out and Seche Vite to give a shine and dry it quickly... because a) I love the high shine finish of SV b) I'm impatient and want my nails dry NOW and c) I'm a creature of habit and I always finish every mani with Seche Vite!

R&R Lacquers Mk II over RBL Footpath

The R&R polishes I used in this post were samples but you can buy them at the R&R Lacquers Etsy Shop. I bought RBL Footpath direct from Rescue Beauty Lounge earlier this year (I took advantage of their free international shipping month!)

Chocolate Sprinkles Nails....... L'Oreal Peach Splash and Lola Camel Brown

 L'Oreal Peach Splash and Lola Camel Brown

Here's a simple tasty mani I put together with a couple of polishes from the high street.  The base is Lola Camel Brown; this is a new range at M&S - here's their facebook page. This shade caught my eye;  it's darker than a nude and warmer than most of the taupes I have so I think it might be unique in my collection!

Lola Camel Brown

Lola Camel Brown

Application of this is good - I used two coats here with Seche Vite. The bottle and brush are good to handle, it has one of those pop-off square caps like Chanel, BL, Illamasqua etc and the actual handle inside is a nice shape to hold.  I wore Lola Camel Brown plain just like this for a day when I needed sober nails (for a meeting that didn't end up happening, lol). The colour reminds me of  chocolate ice-cream :)

Lola Camel Brown

Then I added a layer of L'Oreal Peach Splash, a pretty glitter comprising lemon and peach coloured matte hexagonal glitters in a clear base. Much as I love our UK indies, it is nice just to be able to buy a glitter topper in Boots on impulse sometimes without having to wait for it to arrive (not to mention postage costs). This is one coat of L'Oreal Peach Splash - the glitters are quite generous - topped with more Seche Vite.

 L'Oreal Peach Splash and Lola Camel Brown

I purchased Lola Camel Brown from M&S and L'Oreal Peach Splash from Boots.

R&R Lacquers PANSY

R&R Lacquers Pansy

Pansy is a fantastic lemon yellow crelly with various sizes of navy glitter, red glitter and a little sprinkle of white square glitter. It was one of the R&R Laquers 'Primavera' collection, and although I snapped it up right away when it was released a couple of months ago, I've only just got round to trying it out on my nails!

R&R Lacquers Pansy

I love the combination of colours; I'm wearing it here over a base of L'Oreal Color Riche Lemon Meringue, which is a very pale lemon polish which seems to make the base colour of Pansy really pop! This is two coats of Pansy - no need for any fishing for glitter, lots come out of the bottle with every brushfull and application is very smooth. Because there is a lot of glitter in the mani, I used a coat of Sinful Colors Over The Top topcoat, which is quite thick, under my Seche Vite to make sure this was absolutely smooth.

R&R Lacquers Pansy

I purchased R&R Lacquers Pansy from the R&R Laquers Etsy Shop. L'Oreal Lemon Meringue is from my local Boots.

Quirk Pinky Promise (LE), Butter London Jasper and a change of nail shape

Quirk Pinky Promise over Butter London Jasper

I just wasn't feeling those points this time around - and nails are just for fun after all, so I filed them back to square yesterday.

Here's a lovely spring pink glitter I was lucky to pick up from Kerrie's Quirk Shop when she released a few LE colours last week. It's called Pinky Promise and it's packed full of matte glitters in all shades and shapes of pink and lavender. I love it! Like all of Kerrie's polishes, application was easy, there's loads of glitter - this is just one coat, smoothed out with Gelous and Seche Vite.

Quirk Pinky Promise over Butter London Jasper

I used Butter London Jasper as the base for this mani - it's a sort of lemony-primrose yellow and quite easy to wear. Although I really like yellow as a colour, and yellow polishes in principle, I do find some yellows (especially the eggy colours) don't look good next  to my pale skin. This one is good though. Being a yellow, it's not the easiest to apply, but the colour is pretty enough to forgive it. The formula is a bit on the thin side and rather streaky; I used three coats but it self leveled OK once I put on Seche Vite.

Quirk Pinky Promise over Butter London Jasper

I purchased BL Jasper from my local Boots a while ago and Quirk Pinky Promise from Kerrie at the Quirk Shop. There were just a few bottles of this and they all seem to have gone now - but I'd definitely recommend anybody who likes this sort of glitter to follow Quirk's facebook page as Kerrie has new colours and LEs pretty regularly!

Jelly Sandwich with Quirk Peace Is Free

A sort of jelly sandwich today. The base is American Apparel Manilla, with a generous coat of Quirk Peace Is Free (lots of lovely glitters in this one). Then I decided I wanted to make the glitter a bit more 'matte' looking so I added a thin coat of Sally Hansen Complete Manicure in Polar Bare. Polar Bare is a sheer, jellyish white.

Polar Bare turned the mustardy yellow of Manilla into a more orange toned peach sort of a shade - not at all what I was expecting but I do like it! Finished with Seche Vite Quick Drying Topcoat.

I purchased Quirk Peace is Free from the Quirk website; the Sally Hansen and American Apparel polishes were a gift from a polish friend in the USA.

Flash Nails Jagged

I've been sad to see a few of the UK Indie brands (including some of my favourites) shutting up shop recently, so it's great to see new ones coming in to the market! Here's a brand new UK Indie, Flash Nails, who just opened her Etsy shop last week.

This polish is called 'Jagged' and it's a mix of multicoloured shard glitter. I have a fascination with the irregular shapes in shard glitter polishes, so I love this!

I used two thin coats of Flash Nails Jagged here; the polish is easy to apply with plenty of glitter - no need to fish them out or do any special placement on the nails. The base of the polish is quite thick, but easy to handle. I found the glitters lay nice and flat on my nails; I added one coat of Gelous to smooth the mani out and a coat of Seche Vite quick drying top coat.

The gradient base is NARS 15 Minutes and Illamasqua Jo'Mina, a couple of favourite spring bright shades of mine.

I purchased Jagged from Flash Nails Etsy Shop. Actually I purchased more than one; there are lots of pretty glitters here - so watch out for more from this brand here soon. The NARS and Illamasqua polishes are old favourites from my collection.