Recreating Butter London's Yigal Azrouël’s Cut25 look for Fashion Week

When I saw this look that Butter London founder, Nonie Creme, created for Yigal Azrouël’s Cut25 presentation at Fashion Week yesterday, I immediately said, "I think I can recreate that!"

So after digging around in my polish stash and grabbing some bamboo kebab skewers (aka: the poor girl's dotting tool), I got to work.

Here's what I used:

Two bamboo skewers
cost: $0.02 (you can get a bag of 100 at the dollar store for $1)

Maybelline Coraliscious (limited edition from The Bright Side Summer 2011 collection)
cost: $4.99; purchased on clearance for $2.07

Wet n Wild Garden Hose (limited edition from the Bloom Spring 2011 collection)
cost: $1.99

Sinful Colors Savage
cost: $1.99

Clear top coat (not pictured)
cost: varies, depending on what top coat you use

And here's what I came up with:

For my first time trying something like this, I'm not too disappointed! Granted, this look is not perfect by any means. There are some bubbles and spots where things got a little gloopy, and the placement of the colors isn't exactly what I wanted, but overall, I think it gives the same general feel of the original look. Next time I'll try to make the "drops" a bit more sharp/jagged, so that it doesn't look so much like a Lava Lamp Mani (which is cute, of course, but not the look I was going for).

For this look, I applied two coats of coral as the base and then applied top coat and waited for it to dry. Then I applied the teal-blue shade like you would a French mani, only I took the brush and pulled some lines down in random spots. Using the bamboo skewer dipped in teal-blue, I pulled more color down in random areas. After that dried, I applied another coat of clear top coat and waited for that to dry. Then I applied the mint green shade and did the same process that I used for the teal-blue shade. I finished it off with another coat of clear top coat and VOILÀ!

After working with this color combo to recreate the above mani, I realized that I really liked these colors together, so I decided to try out a polka-dot mani. I experimented on my thumb:

For this mani, I used the exact same polishes and tools, only this time I used the FLAT end of the same bamboo skewers for my dotting tool:

As you can see, I just applied each shade in layers, starting with the coral, followed by the teal-blue and ending with the mint green. I like the layered look of this one and I think it gives it more dimension if you leave some of your bare nail visible.

If you've never used a dotting tool to create polka dots, I find that putting a small "puddle" of polish on a piece of tin foil works best. If you use paper, the paper will quickly absorb the polish leaving you not much time to work. 

For the above look, I used the flat end of the bamboo skewer, and simply pressed it onto some polish that I dribbled onto a piece of foil. Then, making sure the skewer was perpendicular to my nail, I just "dotted" the color on and repeated the process until I was satisfied. I didn't apply clear top coat inbetween shades--I find you really don't need to. I did follow it up with one coat of top coat when I was done applying all three shades though.

A word of caution: if the polish on your piece of foil starts to dry, you could be left with little "holes" in your mani (see pics above) where the dry polish creates suction when you lift the skewer up and off your nail. So just be sure that your polish is nice and wet before you dip your skewer into it.

Have you tried any fun DIY manicures lately? If so, how did they turn out?

Some of the polishes featured in this post were given to Nouveau Cheap for previous reviews.