Butter LONDON Knees Up

I won Butter LONDON Knees Up in the lucky dip at the Boots Children in Need event a few weeks ago. I was thrilled as it's such a beautiful colour and rather festive too. It's best described as a metallic red with very fine red microshimmer running through it. I often struggle with metallic nail polish on my crummy nails as they are less forgiving of uneven surfaces. I found this fared better than most. I had to take a little care to ensure there were no streaks whilst applying.

It's a stunning colour on the nail. I found it chipped quite quickly though, especially around the tip. This happens often with my nails so it may not be the nail polish at fault. Although it didn't last long, I really enjoyed the colour whilst it was on.

From bottom left hand corner clockwise: Lancome Rouge St. Honore, Avon Golden Wine, Knees Up, Avon Wicked, CG Ruby Pumps and LMdB Kontagious Koral

I'd quite like to wear Knees Up or China Girl's Ruby Pumps on Christmas Day. To help with my decision and also to put the colour in context, I pulled out a few of my reds for comparison. I don't have anything that similar in either the finish or the colour. My other reds are either cremes or shimmer finish rather than metallic. Knees Up is quite a deep red too.

L-R: Ruby Pumps, Knees Up and Golden Wine

0. Lancôme Rouge Saint Honoré*

1. Le Métier de Beauté Kontagious Koral*

2. China Glaze Ruby Pumps (3 coats)

3. Butter London Knees Up (3 coats)

4. Avon Golden Wine (3 coats)

5. Avon Wicked

On the nail wheel I applied three coats of Ruby Pumps, Knees Up and Golden Wine. All the rest were two coats and the Lancome nail varnish was opaque with one coat. Wicked is surprisingly dark when applied. In the bottle you can see much more of the red shimmer. I'm very taken with Avon Golden Wine seeing it applied on the nail wheel, the mix of gold and fuchsia shimmer is very pretty when it catches the light.

Butter LONDON nail polishes cost around £10 - £12 each and are available from Boots, Zuneta and Powder Rooms.  Do you have a favourite festive red?


Items labelled with * were received as PR samples

China Glaze Sugar Plums

It's taken me a while to get round to posting this. I got this nail polish a couple of weeks ago during my first visit to Sally's. I love the colour, really love the colour. It's a deep plummy shade with lots of twinkling glitter. However, the amount of glitter means I can't get a smooth finish. In some of the photos you will see it has quite a bumpy, sandpaper-like texture even with a topcoat. I applied the nail varnish in the evening and these photos were taken the next morning. As you can see there is already wear showing. I suspect this is probably because of the finish.

Edit: After a few comments I realise I didn't include my usual disclaimer. My nails are awful. I struggle as I don't have a good base to apply to. The wear I get from a polish is not a good indicator for how this will wear on most people.

Despite it's faults, I'll be wearing it again. Nothing lasts very long on my nails so I'll probably use this just for for evenings out. Are there any tips for achieving a smooth finish with this sort of polish?

I hope you've all had a lovely festive weekend. This weekend I've had a trip on Thomas The Tank Engine with Santa as a guest star, lots of Christmas shopping and our tree has gone up. I'm definitely getting in the mood!