Battle of the Salmons

Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers, aunties, grandmas out there! Without you we couldn't procreate!

A color trend for 2012 that I'm absolutely obsessed with is SALMON. Ever since I got Julep's Alicia in my April Boho Glam box, I've been in love. My favorite dress for the last couple of years is this $20 cotton dress in salmon that I got on sale at Target. I think it complements my olive skin well!

For my Mother's Day gift to myself, I chose a couple of Essie polishes and one of them is Tart Deco.

I just had to! SO, I gathered my two other similar shades to do a comparison... (I'm sorry for the weird cropping, I excitedly painted over my red nails and I didn't want you to see it lol)

In natural light

With flash

I think the winner in my court is Essie. It's a little darker than Alicia, has more of an orange tinge than Trout Pout, and this shade could easily be an Alicia dupe. YES! Thank goodness, because Essie is cheaper!

NOTD - Julep's Anne in Matte

Honestly, Lacquer Lovers, have you ever stood in front of your lacquer collection and just stared at all your bottles for what seems like hours, trying to figure out what shade you want to wear next? If you haven't, well then, that obviously doesn't apply to you, but I have and this is when I convince myself that I need more colors. Yeah, right... that is just an excuse to buy more when you really don't need it. If you are obsessed like me than you do need it. You need it all!

I settled on Julep's Anne, a bright purple creme, and I used butter LONDON's matte finish top coat. This color reminds me of one of my favorite ice cream flavors. Ube (phonetically spelled, oo-beh). I gobble that stuff up like it's the first time I've ever had it. Ube is a Filipino purple yam, not to be confused with taro, but it tastes very similar.

The matte finish seemed to make this color pop a lot more. I never realized how bright this hue was until it was matte.

There will be another blog about this but I personally love butter LONDON's matte top coat compared to all the other ones that I've used. I've used Kleancolor, and Orly and neither of them hold a candle to this stuff. $18 well spent, I say!

NOTD - butter LONDON's Trout Pout

Over the Earth Day weekend there was a special on butter LONDON nail polish at our local Dillard's and the makeup department employee had me at FREE butter LONDON.

Buy 2 get Come to Bed Red FREE

butter LONDON winners are...

Trout Pout - a bright pink salmon color
Bossy Boots - avocodo
Come to Bed Red - a very sexy red

I decided to go with Trout Pout first because I wanted to know if it is a close shade to Julep's Alicia.

Proven in the following pictures, it doesn't really come close. While Alicia may be very close to a salmon color that I am currently obsessed with, Trout Pout is a lot more orangey-pink than I would like.

Two layers

One layer

Also, I am finding that this brand is a little streaky which can easily be fixed with a better brush. The brushes for these lacquers are a little skinny and doesn't cover a whole lot of nail in one stroke. I found myself having this dip the brush 2-3 times per layer.

Overall, it's a very fun color and perfect for Summer!

Butter London - Wallis

I fell in love right when I saw this color at Ulta. The metallic olive rustiness that seemed to glow was calling me from inside that geometrically proportioned bottle. Too many descriptive words? There's a dupe out there by Love & Beauty - Safari, which you can buy at Forever21 for a fraction of the price but the finished look is a bit muted compared to Butters.

Who wouldn't love this? Any girl who loves color the way I do would totally appreciate this! This is my first bottle of Butter London and I had a hard time choosing JUST ONE bottle because it is $$$$ ($14). Moolah that I just don't have. So... I pace myself... The color selection makes it so hard not to stand there for less than five minutes trying to pick from an array shades that you don't normally see from one brand of nail polish.

Are you kidding me? It's so hard! They should start their own Julep box because the polishes are the same price. I would be on that! Well, just because they are the same price doesn't mean they have the same value because Julep's bottles hold 8 ml ($1.75/ml) while Butter holds 11 ml ($1.27/ml). If that makes a difference to anyone but to me that means I can paint more nails with Butter London.

Putting it on was comparable to Julep and I would suggest improving the brushes on them because they are a little skinny, which took more than enough strokes to keep it from clumping. Other than that, I will be wearing this shade for a while. I wonder what other shades Butter London will come up with next?