Saturday Double Whammy - Spring Has Sprung

My two favorite polish colors at the moment fall into the orange and pink families.  I was fortunate enough to score a ridonkulous amount of nail mail which included polish from two awesome girls (including Zoe over at Obsessive-Compulsive Nail Painting Disorder) who sent me colors in fantastic shades.  The two colors I've got to show you today are Mavala Toulouse and Butter London Minger.

MAVALA Toulouse -

This is an aboslutely gorgeous shade of coral the leans decidedly pink.  It's described as a cream (as you can clearly see on the bottle above) but it was a little sheer, requiring 4 coats to get to a decent opacity.  I thought at first Toulouse referred to the artist Henri Toulouse-Lautrec but looking at the rest of the Mavala polish line that features a ridiculous amount of polishes named after cities around the world, I'm pretty certain it was named after the French city rather than the hyphenated artist.

Either way, it's a gorgeous color and perfect for spring.  I don't have any color that I can comfortably call a dupe although I do have a few shades that are in it's family.

Unfortunately, Mavala is a Swiss brand not readily available in the US although you can purchase it from BeautyBay, which ships worldwide, sometimes for free.  The bottles are a mere 5mL each but cost $4.10 each.  They're the perfect size for trying out new things and they are pretty cute, but at $4.10, without the free shipping, it'd be harder for me to justify purchasing them outright.  This color however, is absolutely beautiful, right up my alley, and looks fantastic on olive/yellow undertones so if you're a huge pink/coral fan like me, it's worth every penny or at least finding a super nice person from Europe to send it to you as a very pleasant surprise.


Butter LONDON Minger -

My love affair with Butter LONDON started with a bottle of Wallis and it's been my obsession to own every single color.  Minger is one of those colors.  Unfortunately, this is discontinued (it's from the F/W 2009 collection) but I was lucky enough to swap for it on MUA and I absolutely don't regret it.

A "minger," according to Urban Dictionary, is described as

a male or female who fell out of the ugly tree at birth and hit every branch on the way down

but I would definitely describe this polish as far from ugly as possible.  In fact, as someone who owns a few "ugly-pretty" shades, Minger is the complete opposite of ugly and a lot less bright and saturated as a lot of the swatches available online.

Unlike it's brighter and not-yet-discontinued counterpart, Jaffa, Minger is subdued and the perfect shade of pumpkin orange that looks gorgeous in Spring or Autumn, or really anytime you feel like adding a pop of color without being too loud about it.  Formula wise, it's typical Butter LONDON -- thick but not too goopy although it still took three coats for opacity (at least to my standards.)

Again, I don't have anything like it in my collection although I'm sure you could find something in OPI or China Glaze's extensive line; especially since it is discontinued.  Butter LONDON typically goes for $14 a bottle and they're readily available at beauty stores like Ulta as well as on the Butter London website and high-end department stores like Nordstroms.

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Overall, these were both excellent shades for me; they're not embarrassingly bright and wearable for girls with yellow/olive undertones.  If you're looking for two perfect shades for Spring, you can't really go wrong with these two.