Happy Wednesday! I can’t pour you a nice, relaxing cup of tea through the internet sadly, but I can share some nail polish. Or at least some pictures of nail polish. Butter London sent me their new Jelly Preserve shades and I thought I would share them here. These are super sheer jelly polishes and this time around Butter London is adding a shade with an orange tint and one with a green tint. If you want to see the first two shades, yep, I have a blog post for that! As a bonus, this time around I even wore one of them for ten days. You guys know I NEVER do wear tests because I’m a crazy nail person, but I managed to pull it off on my right hand. These polishes are meant to be treatments to help nourish and strengthen your natural nails. The index nail on my right hand is a particular problem for me (or, more likely, I’m just a problem for it) and I thought I would see what these could do for me.
I did not use any base or top coat for the swatches you will see today! Just straight-up jelly.
Orange Marmalade is the orange-tinted Jelly Preserve. I didn’t know this until recently, but each Jelly Preserve is actually infused with slightly different ingredients to help out your nails. This particular one features argan oil, a wonderful oil for the skin in my experience. Orange Marmalade give me the your-nails-but-better look after just one coat. It makes my natural nail plate look a little warmer, you really cannot see any obvious orange tint.
After two coats, that orange tint starts to make a little appearance. It is a bit uneven, but I am not the best at working with jelly type polishes. I think if I were to wear this one for a treatment, I would probably just stick with one coat.
I stopped at three coats because these polishes are just not intended to become fully opaque on their own and I am NOT doing a jelly polish mountain. The orange tint intensifies just a little bit more after the third coat, but that tint still looks a little uneven on my nails.
Bramley Apple is the green tinted treatment! This one includes olive oil. When I was a kid, I remember reading about a lady who, at least at the time, held the record for the longest nails. They actually looked pretty good, quite curved and not those scraggly, spirally messes I’ve seen some people who are going for the record rocking. She maintained her nails by soaking them in warm olive oil for at least 15 minutes every day. I kind of decided that if olive oil is good enough for her, then it’s definitely good enough for me and I like to incorporate it into diy nail care products! I don’t think I would wear Bramley Apple at just one coat. It definitely has an obvious green tinge to it, but only enough to make my nail beds look very cold. This might be the most tinted of the Jelly Preserves, but it is still very sheer and will not reach full opacity.
The green tint deepens with a second coat of Bramley Apple. The coverage looks a little more even to me than Orange Marmalade did.
You get a strong, squishy green tint to your nails after three coats. I actually wore this look plus top coat for ten days on my right hand. First of all, this stuff feels rock solid on your nails. I got a little tip wear, but no chipping. I did reapply on the fourth and eighth days of wearing it. Just like when I use Zoya Naked Base, when I removed this there was no significant dryness or little peels on my nail plate, it looked no worse for the wear. I think I liked having a pop of color like this on my nails even if it was not completely opaque. If I had worn Orange Marmalade at just one coat like I had originally been planning it would have just looked like nakey nails and driven me crazy. I did also use this as a base coat on my left hand for some manis, that is another way you could use these Jelly Preserve polishes if any of them or the intended benefits intrigue you!
Thank you once again to Butter London for sending these to me, I love not having to decide whether or not to buy their new releases. I am most likely to use these as base coats in the future, but if I ever did something dumb like wear gels (I do have some gel polish, I guess I would use it if I ever went on a long vacation) I would consider slapping these on for a few days afterwards (not that I think people who use gels are dumb, by the way, I just think that the removal process would be particularly harsh on my not-so-resilient nails). These do also have nail art potential, I have an idea of painting them on in little splotches over white. We’ll see if I ever end up doing so!
xx, Ashley
Butter London did send me these polishes as PR. I was not asked to write a blog post or share swatches, doing it for fun!
short nail swatcher 