China Glaze Summer Neon Collection (9/12)

Happy Saturday everyone!

Today I have 9 polishes (out of 12) from the China Glaze Neon collection for Summer 2012. I initially only bought Ride the Waves (since I'm pretty much obsessed with bright blue cremes for now) but I ended up going back to buy the 8 polish set. I mainly bought the set because my inner hoarder told me to, but now I'm really glad I gave them a try!

Left to Right: Orange you Hot?, Surfin' for Boys, Love's a Beach, Pink Plumeria

Left to Right: Beach Cruise-r, Ride the Waves, Splish Splash, I'm with the Lifeguard, Sun-Kissed

Lots of pictures in this post so I'll put them under a cut! Please click "Read More" below to see the swatches!

First up we have...

Orange you Hot? in sunlight

Orange you Hot? under artificial light

Orange you Hot? : This is a lovely tangerine/mandarin orange shimmer. The picture under artificial light is most colour accurate on my screen.

Surfin' for Boys in overcast lighting

Surfin' for boys in artificial lighting

Surfin' for Boys : Neon orange-leaning red with shimmer. I suppose you could call this a coral of sorts. I haven't seen any neon polishes this shade before, which makes this one pretty awesome.

Love's a Beach in weak sunlight

Love's a Beach in artificial lighting

Love's a Beach : Hot pink neon with shimmer. This would be my choice of polish for a barbie-esque manicure. I'm not saying I would do anything like that (I wasn't a very big fan of barbie growing up) but if I wanted to, this would be the perfect polish.

Pink Plumeria in weak sunlight

Pink Plumeria in artificial lighting

Pink Plumeria : A light coral-leaning pink. This one reminds me of a slightly lighter hot pink sticky note. I think this colour is pretty cute actually.

Beach Cruise-r in weak sunlight

Beach Cruise-r : Okay, this one was a bit frustrating to photograph. The first picture above is the closest picture I took that matches the polish colour-wise. The second picture is my little colour swatch of what it really looks like in person. It's definitely more a magenta colour than what is shown in the first picture. I gave up trying to get a colour accurate photo after the first 20 pictures or so.

Ride the Waves in artificial lighting

Ride the Waves in weak sunlight

Ride the Waves : This is another set of pictures I'm not particularly happy with. This polish is definitely more teal than what it looks like in the photos above (leaning towards Rescue Beauty Lounge's Teal, but not quite all the way there). For some reason I couldn't capture the teal-ness of this polish and it's pretty frustrating. This is the only not shimmery polish in the 9 I currently own. It looks like a creme but really applies more like a jelly, so even after 3 medium coats (what I used for these photos) you can still see a bit of visible nail line. It's not too noticeable though (looking at my nails as I type this out)... but then again, it is 3AM right now, and I'm pretty tired. :P

Splish Splash in weak sunlight

Splish Splash in artificial lighting

Splish Splash : China Glaze describes this one as a 'sky blue shimmer'. I'm thinking that pretty much hit the dot, although I guess you could argue that the term 'sky blue' can refer to a bunch of different shades of blue... but I digress. In addition to the sky, this one reminds me of a swimming pool. you know, those ones that have walls that are painted bright blue to make the water look realllly nice and refreshing? Yeah.

I'm with the Lifeguard in weak-ish sunlight

I'm with the Lifeguard in artificial lighting

I'm with the Lifeguard : Oops! sorry about the smudge! I have no clue where that came from. No neon collection is complete without a crazy bright, lime green. This polish is exactly that green. I'm not sure how it'll stack up to another neon green (comparisons with Color Club neons are now in order), but this one strikes me as a no-nonsense highlighter lime green polish. Still pretty though.

Sun-Kissed in artificial lighting

Sun-Kissed in direct, bright sunlight

Sun-Kissed : This is pretty much a highlighter yellow neon, but for some reason I like this polish a lot more than other yellow neons I've tried. It's pretty bright.


By the way, I'm missing Flirty Tankini, Under the Boardwalk, and Hang Ten-Toes. I may pick these up later, but I haven't decided on this just yet. **EDIT: the missing 3 polishes can be found here**

Overall : I wasn't really planning on getting anything from this collection mostly because I know that I tend not to like the look of neon colours on my skintone. Neon colours make my skin look more tan, which I don't like very much. This set of neons however, actually don't really do that and I think that don't actually look too bad on me *gasp*. I can actually see myself wearing these in the warmer months *double gasp*. I usually wouldn't dream of wearing a highlighter yellow polish... strange. In terms of formula and application, I didn't have much trouble applying any of these. I used 3-4 coats for each colour, and I didn't have any trouble with streaking, leveling, etc. I would definitely recommend waiting a minute or so inbetween each coat though.

Since these are neon, they do dry matte (even Ride the Wave, which doesn't realllly seem like a neon), so a nice top coat (I like to use Cult Nails' Wicked Fast or the Out the Door topcoat) is necessary for a bright shine. My favourites from this set are Surfin' for Boys and Ride the Waves. :D

*Whew*. That's all for today! Thank you so much for reading! If there are any errors in this post, I'm going to blame it on the lack of sleep I had today and the late night typing of this post! ;P

Hope y'all have a good weekend!


Marisa