Gettin' Warm! China Glaze Poolside Collection for Summer 2010!

They're bright, tight and dy-no-mite! Well, I love neons, so of course I am going to say that. These are probably not colors you don't already have something similar to, though maybe not exact. But they are a great, manageable formula, very bright, and semi- to fully-opaque. These are all three coats, a thin bottom coat, and two relatively thick coats, with, of course, a topcoat, as they dry matte. They dry pretty quickly, so they are easy to apply, and they are inexpensive, one of the reasons (with the fact their colors can't be beat and their whoppingly magnificent glass fleck) they are my favorite brand. I like this collection but I would added a purple to make a full rainbow!

China Glaze Pool Party is the bright hot pink. My favorite of the group. This is actually a bit different than most of the hot pink neons I have. I'm keeping it.


China Glaze Sun Worshipper is a great neon orange. A calmer neon orange than some, kinda like a neon clementine fruit. I was surprised to find the only neon orange I had other than this is Orly Orange Punch, and this is nothing like it. It's a true orange, not reddish orange.



China Glaze Yellow Polka Dot Bikini is greener than shown here, but is still too much like China Glaze Celtic Sun in color to be worth it - but - this is far more opaque than Celtic Sun, though it is not fully opaque. It may be worth it to spend the few bucks on this and throw away Celtic Sun.


China Glaze Kiwi Cool-Ada is a grassy green neon. And while I like it a lot, it is far overshadowed by China Glaze In the Limelight, which is far more opaque. But still what's not to like about this (providing you like neon, and if you don't you have probably already stopped reading)!


China Glaze Flip Flop Fantasy is that pink with a hint of orange my camera can NEVER capture, so sorry for the picture, but you can get a hint of the color. It's juicy and very bright. At first I thought I had a dupe for this - Essie Punchy Pink, but that is actually darker and pinker, this has a lot of orange in it, and nothing I have is a dupe for it. Claire's Fabulous is the closest I have, and that too is pinker.


China Glaze Towel Boy Toy is a summer sky blue with the lovely blue shimmer that my beloved Color Club Electro Candy neons of last year had. And in fact Color Club Pure Energy is an almost spot on exact dupe, but the Color Club has more shimmer in it.



Are you ready for summer yet? You better start!!

China Glaze for Days! - China Glaze Celtic Sun

It's still summer, even if some of us are back to school! There's still plenty of time for neons!

Celtic Sun is kinda like "what if I took the ink out of a neon yellow highlighter and painted my fingernails with it?". Maybe you are like me and think that sounds like a lot of fun.

China Glaze Celtic Sun:

China Glaze for Days - China Glaze Turned Up Turquoise

This is a gentler neon, a bright, with a very nice shimmer finish to it. Easy to control, and a great summer eye-catcher.

China Glaze Turned Up Turquoise:

China Glaze for Days! China Glaze Blue Sparrow

China Glaze Blue Sparrow (Neon) is easily one of my favorite polishes. There I said it again! And one of my all time favorite blues. The jelly and glitter, I love that combo. This is a beauty.

China Glaze Blue Sparrow (Neon):

China Glaze for Days! - China Glaze Flying Dragon

China Glaze Flying Dragon is absolutely in my top ten polishes of all time. Whenever I wear it I spend an inordinate amount of time admiring my nails. It's mesmerizing. I love the shade of purple, the fine grain red and blue glitter, I love all of it. China Glaze bills this as a neon I am pretty sure, and it does dry matte like many neons. Mine's a bit watery, so I keep my brush lightly loaded.

China Glaze Flying Dragon:

China Glaze for Days! China Glaze In the Lime Light

In honor of China Glaze joining Twitter, it's China Glaze for Days this month! China Glaze is, as I have said, probably my very favorite brand. It has so many colors, so many types of lovely cremes, jellies, glitters, shimmers, and my beloved, magnificent glass fleck polishes! So let's enjoy some China Glaze this month!

Let's start with my absolute favorite green neon, In the Lime Light. Easy to apply, and I swear it's got glass fleck in it. best of all, it's opaque!

China Glaze In the Limelight:

Diamond Cosmetics - $2 Polish and Not Bad At All!

Rebecca kindly sent me a metric fuckton of nail polish the other day, because she's kind and generous like that. She found Diamond Cosmetics, and decided she'd add some stuff for me onto her order. She also, dear Polish Monkeys, bought YOU a gift, which I will post about next.

Diamond has a pretty decent formula! It's more on the runny side, only one creme did I find thick (Oh, Tiff!). All had good coverage with two coats except the Glow in the Darks, which are very sheer. Some cremes could probably even be one coaters, if you put on a thick enough coat, but I prefer two coats in most circumstances to prevent sheer spots.

Diamond has some July Specials, which I will start with first. The first special is six "neons" plus a topcoat and a white, for $15.00. I do not as a rule use whites for base coats, as Diamond suggests, I find that rather than provide a bright base for colors, they wash them out. But that's just my opinion, you may like them very much that way. All these swatches are without white as a basecoat, but, as they are neons and many neons dry matte, I used a topcoat.

Diamond Froggy:


Diamond Beware:


Diamond Danger Zone:


Diamond White:


Diamond Safety Zone:


Diamond Hot Summer Pink, fuchsia pink neon with purple shimmer and an INSTANT all-time favorite of mine:


Diamond Wow, just the bottle and washed out at that, could NOT photograph this bright hot pink correctly, but it's very, very like Essie Punchy Pink:


The second July Special is the "Summer Special" - six red/pinks and two blues, and a topcoat for $12.00. These are two coats with no topcoat.

Diamond Oh, Tiff! - with which I will be doing a comparison against other Tiffany blues later:


Diamond Pink Passion:


Diamond Fiery Coral, which I say is red:


Diamond Don't Teal My Heart Away, a very nice dark teal creme:


This collection also contains Hot Summer Pink, already pictured, and a soft pink called Cotton Candy, which Rebecca kept. The next are not on "Special", but are only $2.00 each, and they are Glow In the Dark, so damn straight I love them. Sorry I did not test out the GITD ability it was daytime and I had a lot of swatchin' to do. :( This is four coats and topcoat. To make up for needing so many coats, they dried quickly!

Diamond Tangeglo:


Diamond Gloworm Green:


Diamond Blue Moonglo:


Diamond Pink Flaminglo:


I have some others, but I am gonna hold them back as I see "A Daily Diamond" daily polish review in the future. :D

Another Month of Zoyas! - Zoya Renee

Renee is another one of those hot pink neons my camera just cannot cope with. It has a decent formula, easily thinned down so you don't get that nasty neon clumpage, and packs a lot of color. It's one of the Summer 2009 La Di Da Collection, and one of the prettiest in that Collection, I think!

Zoya Renee:

Color Club Electro Candy Collection Summer 2009

Dunno how I missed blogging about my favorite neon collection of the year!? I think I was waiting to talk about all the others first. Yes, this IS the year of the Bright and the Neon. Which is fine with me, as I love both.

Color Club's Electro Candy neon collection for Summer 2009 is unique, even among all of this year's neons. Why? because it does not have a neon formula!!! No chalky streaky drying matte polishes here! Electro Candy's formula is like any other polish. It's somewhat sheer, so you will need a few coats, but you won't get streak or clump.

Best of all? They all have blue shimmer! Neon with shimmer? Wow.

Electro Candy has a nice rainbow color balance. One each of purple, pink, orange, yellow, green and blue. It also has a special "color intensifying topcoat" named Vivid, which I did not try. I also did not try the orange, Tangerine Scream. I may have to buy it though!

IMO, a must have for summer.


Color Club Electro Candy:


Color Club Volt of Light:


Color Club Ultra Violet:


Color Club What a Shock!:


Color Club Pure Energy:

Essie Summer 2009 Neons

I LOVE these! As I blogged about when posting about Funky Limelight, the formula is pretty standard neon polish formula. They go on a bit streaky, they dry a bit too quickly, but they are pretty decent anyway, and relatively easy to use. And bright... WOW!! These are eye-popping, and very hard to photograph. You will not be disappointed, unless of course you dislike neons.

The first is a gorgeous, OPAQUE yellow neon, called Funky Limelight. I am going to get another bottle of this, I think it is outstanding in every way. An opaque yellow neon as bright as a highlighter marker? Instant win.



Next up is a soft pink called Punchy Pink. It's nice, you could probably call it hot pink were it not for another color in the series, Flirty Fuchsia, which really IS hot pink. This manages to be a softer pink while still neon. Who knew it was possible. Forgive the picture, it is so bright it just would not photograph well.



Third up is Perky Purple, a juicy hot reddish purple. I got a lot of compliments on this one, it's a stunning eyecatcher.



Last up is Flirty Fuchsia. As previously stated, it's HOT pink. Violent pink, and it almost vibrates on your finger. Sometimes a neon like this can look orange toned on the fingernails, but this stays very true to the color in the bottle, as all of this collection does. And it's gratifying and impressive that they do. Once again, bad photo, this eyebleeder even shocked my camera.




So, if you like neons or are even curious, BUY THESE!!! I think they are hot stuff!


Tyler Durden's opinion of Essie 2009 Neons:
Time to stand up for what you believe in.

Finally an OPAQUE NEON YELLOW!!!

I've tried a fair number of neon yellows. Some are beautiful, some look like I peed on my fingers. But all are sheer even with multiple coats.

But now Essie's new summer neons bring us a magic event - an OPAQUE neon yellow!!

Essie Funky Limelight:


Essie's formula is pretty standard for a neon. It dries very quickly, even on the nail as you polish if you are too slow. So it can streak, which accounts for the 99% instead of 100% opacity. But it also means no mudslides (that annoying slippage to the side of polish which is wet under a dry top layer) and also you are free to go about your business quickly. But it's pretty easy to use despite that and for this kind of opacity in a neon yellow I would put up with FAR worse. I couldn't find it online, but I didn't look hard, I snagged this as part os an Essie mini sampler set. I'll post the other colors soon. ENJOY!!!


A couple other neon yellows, for comparison:
Nina Ultra Pro Solar Flare:


China Glaze Celtic Sun:


Tyler Durden's opinion of neon yellow polishes:
Did you know that if you mix equal parts of gasoline and frozen orange juice concentrate you can make napalm?