China Glaze Entourage

Ok, this must be one of my this summer favorites: China Glaze Entourage. A gorgeous bright grass green with slightly cooler green shimmer. Looks darker in the nail than in the bottle. The shimmer is subtle in the nail, but does not entirely disappear and makes the tone to shift from warmer to cooler, depending on light. Two coats covered my nails well. Application was pretty easy, perhaps the consistency was bit runny, but nothing unmanageable.

I've heard some rumors about this polish being a very bad nail stainer, so I did something unusual and used some base coat underneath. I will update this post later to tell how my nails look after the removal.

My manicure cycle will be somewhat slower now, I try to grow my nails a bit and it helps to not use nail polish remover every other day. But I aim at least weekly updates from now on.

Enjoy the rest of the summer and wear the brightest of all polishes!

***************

Okay, it stained. Bad. My nails look like I had the worst nicotine addiction. My thumbnail had two coats of basecoat and it is not stained as severely as other nails, so with basecoat it is possible to protect the nails. But this is huge minus and I don't believe I'm wearing this shade soon again.

Essie Punchy Pink

Protect your eyes, Essie's Punchy Pink is definitely the brightest highlighter neon pink polish I have seen!


Color-wise this is everything I expected - I was not in search of shy and demure pink. Although I managed to capture the neonness of this color somehow, you really have ro see this IRL to understand how blindingly bright it truly is. And please see the original of the previous picture (*click*!) - for some reason the Blogger image resizing algorithm did very bad things for the quality of this particular image.

But quality-wise I'm extremely disappointed. I've read mixed reviews about the quality of Essie 2009 neon colors and unfortunately I can't join to those who praise it. The consistency was thin, which is totally ok - but also awfully sheer. This is four layers. The first layer was probably streakiest I've ever seen - and layers 2 and 3 gave me worst cuticle drag issues ever. It might work better with base coat, but I don't own any so I can't really tell.

I used my best trick to tackle these problems. After coat three one coat of fast dry topcoat (Seche) stopped the cuticle drag issues, after that just one additional coat was needed for full cover. And another coat of Seche for shiny surface - Punchy Pink dries almost matte as many real neon colors do.

Comparing to my Color Club neons CC wins hands down in quality. This experience left me wanting to try for example Misa's Lather, Rinse, Repeat - it seems to be a neon pink with similar brightness and I don't have any bad things to say about any Misa quality.

Essie Guilty Pleasures

I really like Essie's take on bright reds. This is Guilty Pleasures from summer 2008 collection - a moody shadeshifting coctail of bright pink and radiant coral. Very uplifting, very flattering. Only downside is the pigmentation, this is three layers and I could have added one more for perfect result.

Going bananas with Nubar Lemon Sorbet

Aww, cute! Oh, edgy! That is my first impression of Nubar Lemon Sorbet. Color is more banana ice cream than lemon sorbet to me, but whatever, I'm liking it (almost licking it)! Probably not the best color for my winter skin, but now when I have slight tan it looks actually quite delicious. Don't mind about the skincolor in this picture, I had to adjust the colors a bit to give a truthful impression of the polish color (and was too lazy to protect the other parts of the image).

Surprisingly nice application and 3 layers were enough for perfect cover. Some bubbling issues that might be due of uncompatible top coat (Trind Quick Dry) or my hasty manicure style. Bubbles appeared surprisingly late, in the image the surface is almost perfectly smooth.

Color Club Sexsea - the shiny happy red

I do like reds, especially when they are beautiful and well behaving. Like Color Club Sexsea that I wore yesterday and day before. This color does not scream sex to me, it has bright and happy girlish and perhaps a bit retro feel in it. The color is extremely bright tomato red - but is it my imagination or what, I think that I can see a hint of raspberry in it sometimes. This is two coats + Mavala Mavadry and the result is nearly perfect.

Rimmel Pompous - a glistening true purple

Rimmel is probably my favorite supermarket brand. They have some excellent mascaras and I do like their nail polish. Formula is good - I like especially the 60 seconds version. It keeps the promise and dries fast - and covers with two coats. I could use more shades, though. For some reason they are not importing all colors to Finland. And that's really a shame, the palette is quite adventurous for a supermarket brand.

This beauty is Pompous. A sophisticated, shimmery shade of purple, more mysterious or regal than vampy. Blue and red tones are quite well balanced in this shade, I'm quite tempted to call this a true purple. Also the shimmer is a mix of blue and magenta shimmer, slightly accented with crystal coloured twinkle. It might have a wintery feel on it, but this shade of purple looks really good with slightly tanned skin, too. So I won't bury it on the bottom of the stash for the summer. I might get that feel for purple nails, anyway.

Color Club Power Play: neon can be so good for you!

Color Club has two neon collections, and this bright purple Power Play is from the older Flower Power collection, so this is really old news. I really dig the colour, it is very lively in different lighting conditions, the colour changes from deep fuchsia to unbelievably bright purple, it almost vibrates with the light. Being a neon color it is also surprisingly wearable.

I had to do some photoshop magic for the image to show off the nature of this color - so please don't mind about the slightly weird skin color in this pic. "Slightly weird", well, my hand could pass for a hand of undead in some slightly nail fetishist horror flick...

This polish dries almost matte, so a layer of shiny topcoat is really necessary for this manicure. The color is not easiest to work with, the consistency is bit stringy and goopy, but fortunately two coats were enough for perfect coverage.

Hi ya all! Starting with Misa Dirty, Sexy, Money

I'm all about the small joys of life. Like good food, hearty wine, cat purring on my lap, painting my fingernails with bright colors... Could figure out a lengthy list of those - but I have no intention to blog about them all!

So here's my NOTD:

Misa Dirty Sexy Money. 1 coat, no base or top coat. A great color to start with, flawless application, color impact guaranteed!