REVIEW of Butter London Nail Lacquer in Jack the Lad

Hello lasses,

I don't know why I keep buying Butter London polishes when I don't like them that much. No, scratch that. I do know. It's because of the "discounts." I got this one a year ago at 6pm.com for $6.99, which while not cheap, is a nice markdown from the regular retail price of $15. This is the fifth Butter London polish I've reviewed and I still fail to understand why they think they can charge $15 a bottle when more often than not, their polishes are worse than what I can find at the drugstore.

Color: Jack the Lad is a glitter polish. It has a blackened green creme/jelly base with brighter green shimmer and glitter. It looks very pretty when the light hits it in the right way but I think I have similar dark green polishes that I prefer. I don't think I have an exact dupe but if I want to wear a dark green polish, I have better options in my collection. It also looks quite flat a lot of the time when the light isn't hitting it. The light gives it depth because it brings out the glitter.
Formula: The formula is thin.
Application: The first coat applied smoothly but not evenly because the polish was so thin. Trying to add more polish or even the polish out with the brush just moves polish around on the nail. The base is very sheer in the first coat. Unlike a lot of glitter polishes, this isn't a glitter bomb in the first coat. The second coat and third coats also went on smoothly though I had to even out the third coat a bit. The polish still wasn't opaque in three coats so I reluctantly added a fourth coat of polish. I'm getting pretty damn tired of buying these expensive polishes and then having to apply four coats of polish to get a decent manicure. At four coats, it was basically opaque but not perfect.
Wear: I wore this polish for 4-5 days. I experienced tip wear on my left hand. The polish at the tips of my nails wore away completely but I could have kept wearing the polish if I'd re-wrapped the tips. On my right hand, the tip wear was worse and the polish on my thumb starting chipping on day one for some reason. The polish wasn't easy to remove but it wasn't as bad as other glitter polishes. It just took a lot of Q-tips and more pressure than I'd use for a creme.

CONCLUSION: No, I wouldn't really recommend this polish. It's fine I guess but the color isn't that special, you need to apply four coats to get anywhere near opacity and it doesn't wear particularly well. I need to stop getting sucked in by Butter London discounts.

Click the amazon link. Buy something. You know how this works. ;)

SWATCHES

REVIEW of Butter London Nail Lacquer in Dosh With SWATCHES

Hello chickadees,

Perhaps you're wondering why I'm reviewing another Butter London polish when I haven't had the best luck with the brand in the past. Well, you know I find it hard to pass up a sale and these polishes were recently on sale at Ricky's so I picked up two of them. Also, this shade of green kind of reminds me of Wicked in the bottle so how could I pass up the fabulousness of that? OK, basically I have a problem. You're reading this blog. You already know that.

Color: Butter London Dosh is a medium green shimmer polish. I don't mean to mislead you when I call it a shimmer because it doesn't have the look that I associate with a traditional shimmer. Instead of looking like a creme with a shimmery quality, Dosh feels more like one of those shimmer/flakie hybrids that I feel like I keep running into like Zoya Seraphina. However, it doesn't have that flakie consistency where it seems to apply in little flakes of polish. Actually, you know it reminds me a lot of the Sinful Colors shimmers like Firefly. I'm surprised it has a kind of cheap look for such an expensive polish. As for the shade of green, I would describe it as swampy. It's like a grassy, leafy green that has a slightly muddy, sickly quality. In spite of that, I like it. It's one of those colors like chartreuse that should be ugly but actually kind of works. I think the shimmer can appear to be light gold or more of a silver depending on the lighting.

Formula: Dosh has a thick formula that is very sheer. This is my least favorite kind of polish formula.

Application: Full disclosure, the brush that came with this polish was broken so the application process involved a lot of shenanigans. I'm fully aware that this may have affected the application but A) It's Butter London's damn fault for making a defective product and B) I still think the formula was mainly to blame for the poor application.

Let's begin with the application of polish using my dominant hand. I used the brush (yes, the broken brush) that came with the polish for the first two coats. The first coat of polish went on a little streaky and worrisomely sheer. I found the second coat of polish to be thick. I had to even it out with the brush which was difficult with the polish getting a little gloopy. The polish was nowhere near opaque at two coats. With the third coat, I decided to switch to a Maybelline gel liner brush I had lying around. Application was the same and the polish was still not opaque at three coats. I added a fourth coat because I hate myself, going back to the regular brush that came with the polish. At four coats the polish was more or less opaque but it wasn't fully opaque because of the patchiness and balding caused by the uneven application.

So normally I wouldn't have finished this manicure but I had somewhere to go so I continued to put myself through the torture of applying this polish. To apply polish with my nondominant hand, I decided to clean off an old Orly Bonder brush and use that to apply the polish. I still found the first coat of polish to go on streaky and sheer. The second coat still had to be evened out and the brush created ridges in the polish. However, there was no drag. I found application very similar to application with my dominant hand. I required four coats of polish for any semblance of opacity and I got a very uneven patchy manicure for my troubles.

Wear: I generally apply my polish at night. I applied this polish the night of May 26. By May 28 I already had a lot of tip wear. That is terribly disappointing, especially for a mid-range/high-end brand like Butter London that retails at $15. If you haven't been reading my reviews for a long time, you may not know that my polish almost never chips and I generally only get tip wear days into wearing a polish. So for me, tip wear on day two is unacceptable. I imagine that if you are someone whose polish often chips, this polish is going to be a disaster for you.

CONCLUSION: I can't in good conscience recommend this polish. Even without the broken brush, I think the formula is kind of awful and I started to get tip wear after two days. Really after maybe one day as I already noticed the tip wear in the afternoon on the second day. The only thing I could recommend this polish for is the color which is somewhat unique but it's also not going to be something for everyone. If you're looking for a pretty, grassy green, it's not a dupe, but I would go for Sephora by OPI Leaf Him At the Altar.

 
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SWATCHES

REVIEW of Butter London Marrow With SWATCHES

Hello my little osteoblasts,

Today I have yet another purple nail polish for you. I get on one of these kicks where I decide I need a certain color and then I end up with more purple polishes than I know what to do with. I'll be doing a comparison post eventually so you can see how they all stack up. I want to compare Butter London Marrow, Zoya Monica, Zoya Lael, Zoya Neeka, and Essie Carry On as purples can be a little tricky, leaning more red under one lighting condition and more blue under another. This review is for Butter London Marrow, which has the distinction of being used/designed by the team behind Vena Cava. Now, despite my reservations about Butter London polishes (I had a bad experience with Artful Dodger and while Wallis was an improvement, I still needed four coats to get it fully opaque) I was so in love with the swatches I'd seen of this polish that I threw it into my order along with Butter London Wallis. 

Color: Butter London Marrow is a purple creme polish with shimmer. Maybe I've just tried too many purple polishes but this one seemed a little unremarkable. It tends to lean more red under most lighting conditions but it can also lean more blue under other conditions. This polish was a little tricky to photograph which is why I want to do a comparison post with my other purple polishes so you can get a better idea of how this one compares.
Formula: The formula was nice, not too watery and not too thick, it could cling to the brush without immediately sliding off.
Application: The first coat was pretty opaque. I could see where the brushstrokes overlapped but it wasn't noticeably streaky. By the second coat, the polish was opaque (though I did use a thicker second coat to get a smoother application). So, while it wasn't a perfect formula, I do have to give it credit for being opaque in two coats. As faithful followers of this blog know, I'm generally a three coat kind of girl and a polish really has to be opaque in two coats for me to avoid adding that third coat. The shimmer is somewhat hidden. You can really only see it where the light hits the highest curve of the nail. I felt like it was stronger before I applied top coat so that may have played a role in reducing the effect of the shimmer (though I don't know if that's likely).

CONCLUSION: Butter London Marrow isn't an incredibly special color and the shimmer isn't noticeable enough to really differentiate it from a similar purple creme polish. The formula is alright but not spectacular. The biggest selling point is that it's opaque in two coats. I'm not sure if that's worth the bump in price compared to Essie, OPI, and Zoya but if you really like this particular shade of purple or if you find this polish on sale, I feel OK about recommending it with reservations.

Cat is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. If you would like to help support this site, please consider making your next purchase at amazon.com through the links on my page.

SWATCHES (semi-color accurate)

REVIEW of Butter London Wallis With SWATCHES

Hello chickadees,

I've been wearing Butter London Wallis for a week and my final conclusion is that this is a pretty hideous color. I'm not using "pretty" as a modifier for "hideous". I mean that this polish is both pretty and hideous. But it was an improvement over the last Butter London polish I tried (Artful Dodger) and for that I'm grateful.

Color: Butter London Wallis is a blackened gold glitter polish. It's composed of very fine glitter, similar to Revlon Carbonite so the surface of the polish is still smooth. The glitter gives the polish a lot of depth and depending on the lighting, it can take on a green cast which kind of reminds me of evil snakes. I don't know why. It just strikes me as a dragon-like color. I'm not sure it really suits my skintone, thus the "hideous" but it's kind of one of those colors that is so dominant and aggressive that it kind of wears you more than you wear it. I think it would look gorgeous with darker skintones but if you're OK with a bit of clashing, it could work for almost anyone because it kind of stands apart from the nails almost like an accessory.
Formula: The formula is very thin and very sheer. From the first coat, you get a lot of shimmer and glitter but you don't get a lot of coverage on the nail. I'd almost like to layer this to see how it would perform as more of a top coat.
Application: Application was very smooth, which was a pleasant surprise after the mess of Artful Dodger. However, I did need four coats for opacity. The first coat was very sheer. The second coat was still very sheer and there were a lot of bald patches. The third coat still failed the light test (where you hold you nails up to the light and see whether light passes through them) in spots because of the uneven coverage so I added a fourth coat.

CONCLUSION: Any polish that takes four coats to be opaque is a giant pain in the arse but Butter London Wallis has a lot of depth and application is very smooth. So I'd say that if you're willing to put in the time, I think the color and formula are worth it for someone who thinks blackened greenish gold nails sounds like a good idea. :) This polish is for a very specific kind of girl.

 

SWATCHES

REVIEW of Butter London's Artful Dodger Nail Polish with SWATCHES

Argh. I know that's not a very enthusiastic or engaging way to start of a review but I just don't know how to feel about this polish. It normally costs $14 ($16+ including tax from Ricky's because everything is more expensive for me in NY) putting it above the first tier of Wet n' Wild, Milani, and Revlon polishes, above the second tier of Essie and OPI, about on par with Deborah Lippmann, and below the terribly expensive designer polishes from YSL and Chanel. Given that sort of hierarchy, I guess I was expecting more from this polish.

Maybe it'll help to break down my feelings.

Color: This isn't a new polish so there are plenty of swatches online. At times, it is a very pretty color. To me, it comes across as a dusty sort of robin's egg blue or a dark aqua blue. There's something fun and playful but still a little mature in the way the brightness of the color has been muted. But then at other times, it picks up a LOT of green. I did not sign up for this shade of jade green nail polish in dim lighting. This color should 100% go well with my coloring. In fact, it should look good on most skintones. However, there's some undertone to it, some element that just feels a little bit off. I can't explain it. It just doesn't look like it suits my skin tone perfectly. It might be the green.

Formula: Here is where I'm really conflicted. On the one hand, it is a very watery formula. It took me 3 coats to get it opaque and it was a little streaky. I'm not in love with the brush right now. However, it smoothed itself out for the most part as it dried and then a topcoat of Seche Vite cleared up most of the problems. I have one teensy, tiny popped bubble on the thumb of my other hand (not in the picture) and some slight ridges from the streaky, uneven formula on another finger on my other hand (not in the picture). I guess I'm trying to say that you can get it to look alright but it's not a great formula to work with. It's watery and finicky. I really expected better from a polish that cost this much. It has a sort of jelly finish which is different for me, since most of the nail polishes in my collection have a creamy finish, shimmer, or glitter.

Conclusion: I'm not ready to give up on Butter London but I'm not impressed either. I like the color of this polish but I probably won't repurchase it anytime soon and I wouldn't feel comfortable recommending this polish unless you really, really love the color as I think it's unique enough to make finding an exact dupe somewhat of a challenge.

Swatches:

Can you see what I mean about the jelly finish? It goes on it odd milky layers and ends up looking a little squishy and still milky even though its opaque.

Muted Robin's egg blue

So green!

Muted aqua blue

So green!