Butter London Thames and Henley Regatta

Butter London Thames is what I like to call a "gift wrap ribbon" polish, full of highly reflective shimmer. The shimmer in Thames is a luxurious medium-dark peacock green color, leaning emerald in some lights and teal in others, carried in a grey tinted translucent base.

It is extremely sheer on the first coat and presents a couple of obstacles common to heavy shimmer polishes. One is potential for patching and dragging, which I kept to minimum with a well-loaded brush on the second coat. The second is brushstrokiness. Nemesis, hello! My left hand is just not capable of the smooth even brush technique necessary to minimize these. I watched the polish wobble onto the nails of my right hand thinking, oh god this is a disaster, and immediately grabbed the Seche Vite (aka cure-all) to see whether there was anything to be done after the fact.

And indeed there was. SecheVite didn't remove the brushstrokes but it made them much much less noticeable. Caveat! I did my two coat manicure of Thames with Seche Vite at night. When I got up the next morning, I noticed tip shrinkage on all of the finger nails of my left hand. WTF? I made sure to wrap and wrap again those tips. 

I applied yet another coat of Thames over the shrinkage, wrapping the tips. At that point I was thinking that perhaps Thames might not play well with Seche Vite, so I used Poshe to topcoat instead. This led to the discovery that Poshe seemed to smooth out brushstrokes even better than Seche Vite had. Sometimes certain polishes get along better with one topcoat over another. It's something you only learn with experience.

Photos show two coats of Thames over my basecoat duo of Seche Rebuild and Butter London Nail Foundation, a topcoat of Seche Vite, then another coat of Thames and a final topcoat of Poshe. Sounds like a lot of polish, eh? But it doesn't LOOK thick, much to my delight and relief.

Butter London Thames, bottle shot

Butter London Thames

Butter London Thames

Butter London Thames

Butter London Thames

Butter London Thames

Butter London Thames

LOVE!

Butter London Thames

Butter London Thames

Butter London Thames

Butter London Thames

Henley Regatta is a blue-green glitter polish. It has tiny square glitters in teal, blue and green carried in a clear suspension base. The glitter to base ratio is smaller than you would guess by looking at the bottle, but opacity can easily be built up over three or four coats.

It's an ideal layering polish with its tiny but uber sparkly glitters. It applies easily but will bite you on the butt if you try to push it around. I made sure to let the first coat dry before adding one more, and used a well loaded brush and a light touch for the second coat. It dries quickly and the finish is surprisingly smooth and silky. All of the glitters lay beautifully flat against the nail without a single protrusion, even on the free edge. I finished with a coat of Poshe to protect the glitter.

Even with a sweet well-behaved glitter polish like this one I still managed to get glitters all over the place. I'm not even going to think about removal fallout as I want to ENJOY this sparkly luscious mani while I'm wearing it. But don't be surprised if you see tiny teal glitters lodged in my cuticles for the next however many manicures....

Photos show two totally decadent coats of Henley Regatta plus a topcoat of Poshe over the Thames manicure above.

Butter London Thames, left, and Henley Regatta, right

Butter London Henley Regatta over Butter London Thames

Butter London Henley Regatta over Butter London Thames

Butter London Henley Regatta over Butter London Thames

Butter London Henley Regatta over Butter London Thames

Butter London Henley Regatta over Butter London Thames

Butter London Henley Regatta over Butter London Thames

Butter London Henley Regatta over Butter London Thames

Butter London Henley Regatta over Butter London Thames

Butter London Henley Regatta over Butter London Thames

Butter London Henley Regatta over Butter London Thames

Butter London Henley Regatta over Butter London Thames

Butter London Henley Regatta over Butter London Thames

Butter London Henley Regatta over Butter London Thames

 

Butter London Henley Regatta over Butter London Thames

Butter London Henley Regatta over Butter London Thames

Butter London Henley Regatta over Butter London Thames

Butter London Henley Regatta over Butter London Thames

Eleanor! Isn't this combo just the killer glam mermaidian schizz? TDF! All I can do is stare, drool and babble....

babblebabble,
Aunt Liz