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.

Orange rocks my world - Color Club Orange Revenge

I'm drawn to neon polishes - oranges were the first to catch my eye, but now I'm lemminging more shades. Color Club does good job with neons, this beauty is Orange Revenge, unbelievably bright true neon orange - and surprisingly well covering with just two coats. It really needs a shiny topcoat, it dries almost matte. But when you put on the shine please attach the seat belt and protect your eyes.

Application was not pure pleasure, I don't know why neons tend to be somewhat goopy. But it is definitely not my worst polish to work with - and I really enjoy the eyebrow action this polish creates all around.

I'm warming up for pastels, too. These babies just arrived and I see nail polish removing happening really soon!

Color Club Tangerine Scream <3

Color Club's Tangerine Scream is certainly my favourite of my recent purchases. This color surely makes a reaction. I guess that I got more comments about my manicure in those two days I weared this beauty than I've received ever before, counting all comments!


Like CC:s Power Play, this is very wearable and quite grown up neon - if that is possible. Base shade is beautiful vibrating neon orange, boosted with some unexpected mint green and silver shimmer for most beautiful neon I've ever seen. It is pretty on the pictures, but seen IRL it is almost unreal. Do you see the pinkish cast on the higlights? This color has some sort of weird double nature, it is not totally warm orange, it has this cool tinge, too. And I guess that it makes it easier to wear with different skintones.

Application was quite good for a neon, this is two coats + Mavala Mavadry. In these pictures I tried to capture the overall impression and "neonness" of this beautiful shade, not necessarily the details - and you can't really see the shimmer but it kind of adds some detail even in this kind of pics...

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.