butter London The Black Knight

A few weeks ago I noticed a special 2-pack of butter London polishes in a stupidly large (read: wasteful) package. Of course, I bought it anyway. It contained two glitterbomb polishes, one being The Black Knight. It looked like a fun glittery polish in a dark base. I'm usually apprehensive about glittery polishes, but I bought it anyway.

The two things I don't like about glitterbombs are 1) the lumpy, bumpy feeling you get with the finish and 2) the horrific, cotton-shredding, get-out-of-the-room-while-mom-curses removal. I'm sad to say, both exist with this polish.

First two nails are 2 coats of TBK, the second two are one coat of black and one coat of TBK

The polish itself consists of blue and dark pink glitter, smaller silver micro glitter all suspended in a dark jelly base. As I was swatching on the first two nails, I noticed that the base was very streaky and splotchy. At that point, I thought it would look good over a base of a plain black creme, so I painted my ring and pinky finger with one coat of Orly Liquid Vinyl (which is a fantastic black creme, by the way) and then one coat of The Black Knight. Pointer and middle finger are two coats of The Black Knight plain. It looks much better over a base coat of black than on its own.

Two coats of TBK plain, click to embiggen

You can still see some bald spots in the plain coats. I'm sure a third coat would have evened it out, but it's already quite gritty as it is. I didn't put any top coats on this, but I would guess that it would eat up the topcoat as well. Maybe a coat of Gelous first and then one of Seche Vite would go towards smoothing out the finish.

One coat of TBK over one coat of Orly Liquid Vinyl. Click to embiggen

I think the glitter just pops a bit more when layered over black. You can really see the blue and fuchsia glitter really well like this. And just as I thought, it was a bear to remove. I almost sent the spitfire out of the room during removal in case I began cursing (spitfire 2.0 is still too young to understand my, uh, colorful language, she can stay). But I persevered. 

I'm glad I bought this. I'm sure I'll be hesitant to use it simply because I'm anticipating the removal, but I'm going to have to get over that!