Butter London Cakehole

I'm not sure when Butter London Cakehole was originally released but it was repromoted as part of Butter London's Colour Clash collection for fall 2013. Officially described as a "nearly neon pink," this is a medium intensely vivid pink with strong coral undertones. In fact, I feel more comfortable calling it a coral than a pink although I suspect the coral undertones are partially a consequence of the near neon intensity of the color than they are a deliberate chromatic intent. In any case, to me it reads as a very vibrant corally pink with the tendency to show more orange or more pink nuances depending upon the lighting. 

Application was amazing. Cakehole is a creme/jelly hybrid and this is reflected in the formula as the best of both types. It has the bouncy gel-like qualities of a jelly combined with the creamy easy flow of a creme, enabling precise, even application. Even with my shaky hands and subpar finger dexterity, I had only the tiniest bit of clean up to do. As a crelly, there is a certain amount of translucence to the polish that is somewhat disguised by the vibrancy of the color. I thought I'd achieved opacity at two medium coats until I looked at my nails backlit. It turned out needing three coats to reach an acceptable opacity and bottle color. Cakehole sets and dries very quickly and applies so nicely that three coats is less time consuming than you'd expect. The natural finish is rubbery rather than matte like a neon, and takes topcoat well. Although it's not hard to get an even application, Cakehole isn't the best self-leveler I've seen and topcoat really helps to even out any problematic areas.

Photos show three medium coats of Cakehole over treatment and basecoat with a topcoat of Seche Vite. I used my brand new All Your Base ridge-filling basecoat from Pretty Serious for the first time and was very favorably impressed. It did just as nice a job of providing a smoother painting surface over my furrowed nail beds as the Butter London Nail Foundation I usually use, dried faster and is less expensive. It's milky-transparent and so doesn't have the camouflaging capacity of the Butter London, and I'll need to use All Your Base a little more before I declare a radical paradigm shift, but I'm thinking it very likely that I've found a new go-to basecoat.

Butter London Cakehole

Butter London Cakehole

Butter London Cakehole

Butter London Cakehole

Butter London Cakehole

Butter London Cakehole

Butter London Cakehole

Butter London Cakehole

Butter London Cakehole

To get the photos true to color and not overly orange I had to desaturate them a little, so keep in mind that while these pics show the proper color of Cakehole, it's more intense in person. Comparing it to Trout Pout, it's more neon in intensity and deeper in tone as well as more saturated (Trout Pout has some white in it). I love this! When I blogged about Zoya LC, I said that I thought I may have found my holy grail coral. I was wrong, Cakehole is the ONE! It's more pink, less red than LC and that makes a huge difference.

Cakehole is very near to a favorite Borghese coral that I used to wear decades ago in my Administrative Assistant days. I had a black rayon shirtdress in an abstract print of white and tropical colors that was very blousy, drapey and swishy and I loved to wear that polish with that dress, the coral matched one of the colors in the print perfectly. It just made the outfit! I didn't wear nail polish all that often back then but I adored that Borghese coral.

I still have Deborah Lippmann's Daytripper in my swatching chute, a long-time lemming that I always thought would be a contender for the HG coral, but it's a tad more subdued than Cakehole in the bottle. It's hard to imagine it could be better, but I'll try to keep an open mind. Besides, can one have too many fabulous coral polishes?

love,
Liz