This turquoise beauty is Madam Glam Caribbean Island, one of their regular nail polishes. It’s similar to China Glaze Too Yacht to Handle but a little bit lighter.
Two coats with top coat, in shade:
With flash:
I stamped using Colour Alike “b. a Fairy Forest” and “b. a Sunshine” and designs from Born Pretty plate BP-L015.
Just a quick post to share my favourite neon purple, That’s Shore Bright by China Glaze! Being a neon purple, it’s hard to photograph accurately. I had to use my phone because it’s much more accurate for certain shades of purple and blue than my camera is! The first photos are under Ott Lite.
I used three coats of polish plus top coat here. The next photos are under halogen light.
I’ve got two swatches and a comparison to show you today! First up is Black Cat Lacquer Lotus Flower.
This is a nearly-neon bright pink with subtle holo and heavy gold glass fleck shimmer.
I love it so much! Two coats plus top coat, great formula.
In the shade:
Here is the comparison, top to bottom: Lotus Flower, Picture Polish Electric Dream, Colour Alike 510, ILNP Cutie Pop.
Electric Dream is the most similar to Lotus Flower, but it’s less bright/neon and has larger, scattered holo flake particles. Colour Alike 510 is quite a different shade of pink and doesn’t have gold glass fleck. Cutie Pop on the other hand is a lighter, softer pink and its holo is more prominent than its glass flecks, the opposite of the Black Cat Lacquer. I used two coats plus top coat for each of them.
Again, left to right: Black Cat Lacquer Lotus Flower, Picture Polish Electric Dream, Colour Alike 510, ILNP Cutie Pop.
And finally, here are swatches of Colour Alike 510. This one is also really pretty!
Two coats plus top coat, although it’s almost a one-coater. I’m going to try it for stamping as it seems like it might work well! In the shade:
And a couple more in the sun:
Here’s a layering combo I did using Kleancolor Neon Pink and Starlight Polish Ever Blue, a glass-fleck topper that shifts from blue to pink. Two coats of the Kleancolor followed by one coat of Ever Blue and topcoat. With flash:
Under Ott lite:
Here’s a subtle single-dotted mani I did with China Glaze Sun Upon My Skin and Be More Pacific, using a dotting tool to add one dot of the other colour on each nail near the cuticle.
I used three coats plus top coat for both of these. The formula wasn’t my favourite; I found them a bit runny and not very self-leveling, and got some small bubbles in a few nails. But the colours are pretty.
Here’s Thor hanging out in the background!
With flash:
I wanted to compare these pastels to a couple of similar Ellagee pastels from their Beach Bum collection – She Sells Seashells (yellow) and Seaside Cottage (green).
Unfortunately I didn’t write down how many coats I used of the Ellagee polishes, but I’m pretty sure it was also three coats plus top coat for them. They did have a significantly nicer formula than these China Glazes in my opinion!
Left to right/top to bottom: Ellagee She Sells Seashells, China Glaze Sun Upon My Skin, Ellagee Seaside Cottage, China Glaze Be More Pacific. As you can see the Ellagee yellow is lighter and brighter, and while the greens are more similar to each other than the yellows, again the Ellagee is a little bit lighter and brighter.
I then added a matte neon circle glitter topper, Ellagee Gumballs, over my comparison to try it out.
While I love the colour and shape of the glitters, overall I was disappointed by this polish. I had only had it a few weeks before trying it, but the base had already developed a bit of a pink tint from bleeding glitters. As you can see in the photos it’s muddied the colours of the base polishes.
I also found it pretty thick and ended up with some bubbles trying to get a good amount of glitter onto the nail and distributed. Ah well. I do really like the circle shape and the neon pastel colours. Placing the glitters individually with a dotting tool or orange stick would probably work out better!
Here’s a kind of skittley mani, due to a comparison I wanted to do. It started out as LA Girl Allure with an accent nail of Black Dahlia Lacquer Fuchsia Flower, but then I switched my index nail to Orly Ablaze since I wanted to see how it compared to Allure.
Ablaze is more orange, while Allure is more coral, and of course they have different shimmer as well; Orly’s gold shimmer is larger flecks while the LA Girl’s is very fine.
Fuchsia Flower has blue glass flecks in it, which aren’t showing up very well on the nail in these pics but you can see clearly in the bottle below.
I stamped on the mani using Fingerpaints Minimalistic Mauve (over the coral/orange nails) and Picturesque Purple (over Fuchsia Flower), and plate Hehe-040.
Shade:
With flash:
I recently got the entire Ellagee Beach Bum collection of sunbleached neons, and here is the first (evolving) mani I did with a few of them. Including my first successful watermarble attempts! 😀
Here are the three shades I started with, By The Sea, Salty Breeze, and Snoozing in the Hammock:
My only previous watermarble attempt was a failure given that it was about 15 degrees Celsius in my place at the time. This time, in the summer, things went a lot better. Not without issues, my first try below had to be redone because I got too much of the polish on my fingertip and it kind of ran all over my nail covering the design I’d originally tried to pick up.
Oh and the little cup I’m using is the China Glaze shot glass from one of their holiday sets a few years ago. 😀 I also used Sticky Paws liquid latex from Eat Sleep Polish around my nail for clean up; clearly on my first try there I didn’t go far enough down my finger so I added more for the next tries! I should also mention that as base for all the watermarbled nails shown here, I used one generous coat of Milani White On The Spot.
The marble isn’t perfect; I did get a spot from where a water bubble got stuck in the polish, but I was happy with how it turned out!
On my left hand I did the other fingers in By the Sea, and on my right hand in Snoozing in the Hammock. I used two coats plus top coat for each; they had a good formula that self levels pretty well.
Both hands together:
With little Wu in the background:
For the second day I changed things up a bit by painting Salty Breeze on a couple of the nails on my left hand. It had a similar formula to the previous two and this is also two coats plus top coat:
On my right hand I changed the watermarble as well as a couple of the plain fingers. Unlike the other photos which were in sunlight, these ones are with flash.
This time I used Beach Bum, the peach from the collection, along with Salty Breeze and Snoozing in the Hammock for the watermarble, and painted my thumb and middle finger with Beach Bum.
For Beach Bum I needed three coats plus top coat since it was still a little streaky at two, but that may have just been me not being as careful.
So far I’m loving these Ellagee polishes, and I definitely recommend them if you’re looking for pastel neons! And I was so happy to have a watermarbling success! The designs aren’t perfect but at least they went on my nails ok! Next I’ll work on making nice, smoother swirly designs. 😀
Today I’ve got three beautiful Black Dahlia Lacquer polishes to show you! The first one is Lime Green Daisies, which was from the New Year’s multichrome flake duo. It’s a metallic, yellow-toned pastel green with copper-pink/green multichrome flakes, strong gold shimmer, and turquoise glass flecks. I used two coats plus top coat for this swatch.
Under Ott Lite:
Next is Lilac Petals; this was the exclusive extra polish I received in a ‘buy 4 petite-sized polishes get an exclusive petite polish free’ sale not long ago. It’s got a denim blue base with metallic red-maroon flakes and pink and blue glass flecks. The photos show two coats, no top coat. Love!
In the shade:
And the third polish I have to show today is Bleeding Hearts. This is from the Valentine’s Day collection. It’s an almost-neon pinky purple with multichrome flakies and turquoise glass flecks. I used three coats, although two would probably be fine as well, and no topcoat in this swatch.
In the shade:
All three of these are just gorgeous! Black Dahlia Lacquer really makes some great polish. 😀
This beauty is Black Cat Lacquer He Loves Me Not, released in February 2014 in an indie collaboration box (but I got it secondhand from someone’s blogsale).
It’s a neon pinky-purple with these great blue flakes. The flakes are opaque and tend to sink to the bottom of the bottle, but turning it upside down for a minute or two before use solves that.
Here you can see a bunch of the blue flakes up against the side of the bottle:
I used three coats plus top coat and didn’t have any issues with application.
I love these blue flakies!
In shade:
I did a comparison with Fingerpaints Gorgeous Graffiti and Glam Polish Beauty School Dropout, similar neon purples that have blue flecks of different types.
Left to right, He Loves Me Not, Fingerpaints Gorgeous Graffiti, Glam Polish Beauty School Dropout, three coats each.
Left to right: Black Cat Lacquer He Loves Me Not, FingerPaints Gorgeous Graffiti, Glam Polish Beauty School Dropout
The Fingerpaints is slightly more purple and has translucent blue glassfleck-type flecks rather than opaque flakes.
Top to bottom: Black Cat Lacquer He Loves Me Not, FingerPaints Gorgeous Graffiti, Glam Polish Beauty School Dropout
The Glam Polish is slightly pinker and dustier and has much smaller blue glassflecks as well as scattered holo.
Left to right: Glam Polish Beauty School Dropout, FingerPaints Gorgeous Graffiti, Black Cat Lacquer He Loves Me Not
Today I have one of my favourite creme polishes to show you, NCLA Poolside Party, All Eyes On Me. One reason I love this so much is the uniqueness of the almost-neon pastel peach shade. I previously showed it in a swatch wheel comparison here.
This is one of those colours that is really difficult to photograph accurately! The first two photos are with flash, and the last two are under Ott lite, and give a pretty good indication of the colour in different lighting, I think.
I used three coats of Poolside Party, plus top coat. The formula is admittedly difficult to work with; it’s got the streakiness typical of pastels. But so worth it!
I would highly recommend this for anyone who likes peach and/or neon-pastel shades!
Vegan Claws 
You must be logged in to post a comment.