Butter London Victoriana: when good polish goes bad

Urgh...ever have those manicures when nothing goes right? This is one of those. Nice polish, gorgeous colour...crap manicure. Figured I should post it anyway because it doesn't look that bad in the pictures despite the awful inception.

This one was doomed from the start, since it was done on Eurovision night. For anyone who's not come across Eurovision - lucky you - it's an annual knees up where tragically awful acts from European countries get to perform, and then every country votes. Usually for their neighbour. Hence why Azerbaijan (where?) won this year. It's a cherished cultural institution in Europe, because it's wonderfully naff and usually involves parties where everyone gets dressed up as a country and then proceeds to get blind drunk. Can you see why this was a bad idea?

As it happens I wasn't at a party last night - we stayed in with friends over - and I decided to do a mani/pedi to keep me occupied, because I'm a fidget who can't sit still in front of the television. So I did my toes first, whilst knocking back the ale (the pedi was even worse, by the way - I took Illamasqua Alarm off which stained my toes tomato, and then tried to put a nude over the top. Result: hot mess). By the time I got to the tips I was polishing with the kind of exaggerated comedy concentration normally only seen in five year olds. I did two coats, and then the takeaway arrived, whereupon I dinged them to hell and lost the bottle cap. Epic fail.

The next day, cracking hangover in tow, I tried to tidy it with a third coat and topcoat. This was the point at which Neurotic Cat had a minor breakdown and decided that if I didn't give her a cuddle that very moment, she would leave home. Then Kamikaze Kitten got jealous of the attention and jumped on my lap too. They then had a fight. Meanwhile, I'm holding my hands in the air like I'm directing traffic. Finally I kick them off and go to put topcoat on, but my seche vite has set like jelly and makes it even worse. I give up.

This is the result. The Polish is a gorgeous colour - a kind of dingy teal-blue with silver microglitter. It would probably be fine with two coats if those two coats hadn't been applied through beer goggles. I find the BL brushes a little fiddly because they're narrow, and the glitter in this means that the polish doesn't move very far, so thick coats are necessary. But it's lovely and I will definitely be trying it again under more auspicious circumstances.

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