Butter London Artful Dodger

Butter London's Artful Dodger is a medium-toned greyed aqua blue creme -- sort of a murky sky blue with a drop of green in it. It's a beautiful creamy color with the grey and green giving it a little military edginess. After reading reviews about it online, though, I think I may be the only polish enthusiast who doesn't see it as a cheerful spring and summer color. Not that I don't think it's great for spring and summer, just that to my eye it's somewhat more moody and smooth than cheerful. It's actually kind of a comfort color for me, or would be if it was a little less problematic to apply.

This polish gave me FITS during application. Artful Dodger, indeed. I actually did two and a half  manicures with this polish. The first one I did at night. (Never do this!) Artful Dodger has a very thin, very liquid consistency and goes on extremely sheerly especially with the first coat. So I loaded up on the second coat, two and sometimes three brushdips of polish. I can see you cringing now! Well no doubt I got plenty of polish on my nails but along with came plenty of bubbling, which I artfully captured underneath a topcoat of Poshe. I did photograph this effort, but once I saw the macro shots there was NO WAY I could in good conscience subject innocent readers to the horror. 

So I began again. But I didn't get very far. This time I just blanked out and forgot to use a basecoat. I quickly realized the omission but was like, shrug, let's just try it anyway. Bad move! Artful Dodger is so thin and sheer that my nail ridges were rising through the polish even after two coats. Full stop. Remove. Once again, with feeling.

Third time's a charm. Or maybe not. Artful Dodger really is an incredibly sheer, thin polish. It dries very quickly, which isn't necessarily a bad thing but I have to be super careful with quick drying polishes not to overwork them or they pull patches badly. And with a creme like this, every patch shows. It also ghosts around the edges if you don't align your coats perfectly, as you will see. 

I ended up doing three coats of Artful Dodger over Seche Rebuild treatment and Butter London Nail Foundation basecoat. By the third coat, I was double dipping the brush on most of my nails to prevent patching. I suppose I could have waiting longer between coats but I'm not so sure that would have helped, and by this time I was not wanting to wait and risk smudging the polish. I finished with a topcoat of Seche Vite.

Chagrin du jour: Major cuticle swipage on the middle finger of my left hand overlooked during clean up. Oops!

Butter London Artful Dodger

Butter London Artful Dodger

Butter London Artful Dodger

Butter London Artful Dodger

Butter London Artful Dodger

Butter London Artful Dodger

Butter London Artful Dodger

Butter London Artful Dodger

Butter London Artful Dodger

Butter London Artful Dodger

Butter London Artful Dodger

Butter London Artful Dodger

Butter London Artful Dodger

Butter London Artful Dodger

Butter London Artful Dodger

Butter London Artful Dodger

I've read reviews of Artful Dodger online where folks had none of the application problems that I did, ie with the polish being so very sheer and thin. Perhaps there was a bad batch or two that got by quality control? 

Even with the problems, I love this color. 

love,
Aunt Liz