A Makeup & Beauty Blog – Lipglossiping

Due to launch this Autumn are six new “specialist” shades from China Glaze that promise to leave you mesmerized as the color shifts and moves across the nail, traveling with the light.

Woohoo for duochromes!

Recent duochrome launches have been a bit disappointing no?  I still smart from being underwhelmed by the much-hyped Models Own Beetlejuice collection which offered (to my eye), a disappointing effect on the nail compared to the bottle shots.  I’m gonna be a tough cookie on these if they fail to live up to those lovely stock images below.

• Unpredictable – Multidimensional gorgeous green
• Rare & Radiant – Extraordinarily rich gold
• Swanky Silk – Brilliant beige with peach undertones
• No Plain Jane – Lavish lavender-pink
• Want My Bawdy – Sexy sapphire blue
• Deviantly Daring – Adventurously bold peacock teal

It almost makes me excited for Autumn.  I said, almost.

Some polishes make you gasp with their sheer beauty, others turn down your lips with an overriding “meh”.  China Glaze’s Under the Boardwalk has me scratching my head in total bewilderment.  How can a polish look so different in the bottle compared to how it applies on the nail?

Please excuse the mistreated cuticles (I need some marigolds), but what kind of messed-up voodoo is at play here?!  Is it purple or is it pink?  I even did an extra two coats (4 shown in the photo above) to make sure that the colour was fully fully opaque.

And then it got weirder when I read this about it on The PolishAholic.  Anyone else got a freaky one?

China Glaze Under the Boardwalk, you tricky, shape-shifting polish you.  I wouldn’t mind, but you’re not even a particularly fashincating colour!  Get over yourself.

China Glaze Under The Boardwalk is available to buy instore from Sallys or online at BeautyBay.com, priced from £6.95

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Sink or swim?  I’m definitely sinking this week but I’m not going down without a fight!  Splish Splash feels rather apt and this beautiful cerulean blue is a dreamy shade.  Again, I had issues with thickness and pooling at the edges of the nail bed… thin coats are a must, but the polish redeems itself with a no-nonsense coverage that’s done in two coats.

All of the shades in this Summer Neons collection have benefited from a top coat to bring back the shine that these neon formulas often lack upon dry-down.  The shimmer gives this sea-blue a real kick and sparkle that does it complete justice in the sun.

China Glaze Splish Splash is available to buy instore from Sallys or online at BeautyBay.com, priced from £6.95

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I’m not really down with surfing jargon but I have totally watched Point Break as many times as the next girl, perhaps even more… sometimes in slow-motion too.

hang ten (verb American) – to ride a surfboard (at near-optimum speed or full stretch) with the toes of both feet hooked over the front. From the jargon of American surfers since the early 1960s. The phrase is sometimes used figuratively to mean something like ‘go full-tilt on a risky course.

China Glaze’s Hang Ten Toes might not make me think of Keanu Reeves or Patrick Swayze (rip) but it does make me think of long Summer days and sand between my toes.

Hang Ten Toes* is a superbly vibrant, hot pink with a silvery shimmer that gives the polish some blue flashes in the right light.  It’s a more wearable neon pink than some, though still impressively bright.  The formula was good, a little thick – as with the whole collection so far, it needs a small amount of care and attention to prevent pooling at the cuticles.  That’s the price CG have decided we should pay for impressive opacity in only two coats this time around.

China Glaze Hang Ten Toes is available to buy instore from Sallys or online at BeautyBay.com, priced from £6.95

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Orange You Hot? Well, you are indeed warmer than a slice of Kingsmill, toasted on the defrost setting.  I’m not really damning this polish with faint praise… it’s pretty bright, but to be honest… it’s still totally wearable for everyone.  I realise this is probably a good thing… but I do like my neons to just occassionally, set my retinas alight.

Orange You Hot is an orange, nay tangerine shimmer.  The shimmer adds a dose of brightness that can’t help but inject a bit of wotsit (cheetos)-flavoured sunshine into the proceedings.  Mr. L hates it… which means that I, of course, have to love it more than I really do just to piss him off.

China Glaze Orange You Hot is available to buy instore from Sallys or online at RadiantBabe-Beauty, priced from £6.75

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I love blue nails, yet rarely wear them myself.  I don’t know why that is… perhaps the fear of smurf fingers after removal (though I’m frequently advised that a smear of vaseline over your fingertips avoids the problem), or is it simply the primitive-ness of the hue? Perhaps I’m just scared it might make me look like Michael Howard’s lovechild (afterall, there is “something of the night” about me).

China Glaze Ride The Waves doesn’t really conjour up images of riding any kind of waves, it feels more traditionally maritime blue in a Royal Navy kinda way than all surfy n’ stuff.  Although most definitely a primary blue, the finish is all squishy and jelly-like to give some oomph to its character.  Unlike some of the other brights in the Summer Neons Collection, this one isn’t actually all that bright – though it does create an impact.  Application was fine but worth bearing in mind that it will prove to be a little sheer because of the jelly finish (the above photo shows three coats).

China Glaze Ride the Waves is available to buy instore from Sallys or online at RadiantBabe-Beauty, priced from £6.75

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I thought I’d start swatching the China Glaze Summer Neons collection with my favourite (at least from just looking at the bottles): Pink Plumeria*.  It’s a bright coral which definitely leans more towards the pink side of the spectrum, making it an excellent choice for those of us who might usually struggle with the warmth in traditional coral shades.  Pink Plumeria, to my eye at least, carries a really subtle duochrome – I’m not sure if this is intended, or is simply a result of the golden shimmer packed within.

You can see on the nail tips, there’s definitely more golden tones than toward the base of the nail bed.  The formula on this one was ok… a bit prone to pooling, so definitely paint this one on in thinner strokes.  This is going to be such a lovely pedicure shade too, I’m feeling the love for this one!

China Glaze Pink Plumeria is available to buy instore from Sallys or online at RadiantBabe-Beauty, priced from £6.75

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Do I feel a faint glow of warmth on the back of my neck?  Could it be that Summer is attempting to at least play a bit part in our lives this year?  I won’t hold my breath to be honest, so while I can see a bit of blue inbetween the clouds, I’m gonna make the most of it.

There’s no better way of injecting some summer lovin’ into your routine than with skittle-licious nails in the shape of China Glaze’s Summer Neons collection*.

Twelve shades of super-vibrant colour in that Summer-staple neon formula.  Have we seen these before?  Probably – but those hot corals never fail to make me smile, no matter how many times they come around.  Individual finger swatches coming soon!

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It’s like that time I found out about coconut m&ms (did the m&m website really just age-check me?!), I can’t remember where… some foodie blogger who was baking immense cookies with them or something.  Oh, how I hungered for the crunch of a more tropical m&m… I thought about ordering online but realised that if I’d ordered enough “candy” to make the postage worth it, I could kiss goodbye to both my diet and ever-decreasing arse.  So I waited.  And I waited.  I contented myself with peanut M&Ms as my weekly treat but it was never quite enough.

Then one day.  I snapped.  Actually, I think it was about three days later, but whatevs.

I don’t know if I’d dreamt about them but I woke up with a mission, and one that I was going to fulfil if it killed me.  We were going on a roadtrip and I WAS going to have my coconut m&ms damnit.  We jumped in the car, Leila still rubbing her eyes after being dragged from her bed (don’t worry, I made it up to her with a Tootsie Roll) and we headed up the M3 in search of Shangri-La.  Or the Stateside Candy Co. in Aldershot as Mr. L called it.

I bought two packets.  And some root beer, mac & cheese, cheetos and Vanilla coke… what?

Well anyway, I got back to the car… cracked open my Vanilla Coke (O.M.G) and dipped into the bag of coconut m&ms.

Meh.

A bit like this polish.

I wanted China Glaze Fast Track from the moment I saw it online, I mean… look at the bottle!  What in the name of all things sprinkled in gold shimmer could be more beautiful?  But on my nails, it just doesn’t translate so well.  There’s nothing wrong with it per se, it’s just that the base shade does absolutely nothing for my skin colouring.  Infact, it looks a bit fecal in an anaemic kinda way and no amount of beautiful golden sparkle can make a turd look good.  Unless, you completely obscure the turd with gold glitter, but this doesn’t do that.  I digress.  I didn’t mean to talk about turds either, sorry.

So yes, on paper… it’s a wonder, but when you get down to it… like coconut m&ms. it just leaves me feeling a bit, disappointed.

China Glaze Fast Lane is available to buy as part of the Hunger Games collection, priced at £6.59 from Sallys

* I want to live off cheetos and mac & cheese for the rest of my life. Orange food ftw.  Oh and these mini-doughnut things that must have been packed with enough preservatives to restore the defunct do-do.

I’m crackled out.  I’ve been crackled out for about a year.  I’m bored of crackle.  No more crackle.  Boo to crackle.

China Glaze have released FOUR new crackle glitter polishes, because they think that I OBVIOUSLY haven’t seen enough crackle yet.  The new China Glaze Crackle Glitters* landed on my doormat yesterday and I thought I’d swatch them up for all those 3 people out there who aren’t bored of crackle polishes yet.

If I’m serious for a moment, they’re actually pretty cool (in a really boring crackly way).  The four shades are Summer brights and each dries to a matte finish.  I haven’t applied a top coat in the swatches because all the swatches I’ve seen so far DO include a top coat and I also wanted to gauge their drying time and how much they might/might no pull apart the lower layers of my maniucre as they dried.

Turns out, they didn’t fare too badly at all, each finger was touch dry in about 10 minutes and fully dry within half an hour.  That’s without top coat remember.

The four shades from left to right:

Luminous Lavender (luscious light purple)
Glam-More (bold fuchsia)
Jade-d (radiant bright green)
Gleam Me Up (bright sky blue)

Jade-d is a beaut, it’s a golden green that really pops against a black nail. Glam-more and Gleam Me Up are equally punchy and Luminous Lavender is left languishing as my least favourite.  It’s simply sheerer than the rest and lacks the spark and contrast apparent in the other shades.

Ultimately, whilst I’m massively over the crackle trend, the formula on these is great and I’ll begrudgingly admit that there’s nothing better for patching up a tired manicure in minutes.  Got tip wear?  Slick a coat of one of these over the top and you’re sorted.  It’s a lazy girl’s secret weapon in her nail arsenal (am I giving away my secrets?)

If you’re on a budget, it’s worth pointing out that MUA do some crackle glitters for around half the price of these, though I haven’t tried them so can’t comment on their quality.

China Glaze Crackle Glitters should be available to buy in the UK instore from Sallys.  I can’t see them up on radiant-babe-beauty or beauty4nails-body yet, but I’m sure it won’t be long.

Are these reigniting a spark of fondness for just one more dip into the trend?

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I received a press release the other night announcing the new China Glaze Prismatic Collection.  Six new shades — a chunky glitter fest, complete with holographic particles.

The shade descriptions:

Optical Illusion – Aqua green glimmers with a hint of purple filled with pink, yellow, silver, orange and green flecks
Polarized – Silver metallic sheen sprinkled with yellow, pink, orange and green glitters
Prism – Grape purple holographic gleams with pink shimmer and glitters with pieces of pink, blue, green, orange, silver and gold
Ray-diant – Greenish-gold shimmer filled with specks of cilver, pink, green, orange and blue
Liquid Crystal – Bright blue holographic with purple tint dusted with silver, gold, green, pink and orange
Full Spectrum – Baby pink bursts into holographic magenta to party with silver, gold, blue, pink and green particles

They sound amazing don’t they?  But honestly, I’m over chunky glitters that claim to be holographic and duochromes that only just make the grade.  I’m really not seeing much that yells holographic in these and isn’t it about time we had another proper holo collection from the big players anyway?  C’mon now…

Maybe it’s ‘cos they’re a bit pastel-ly but I’m just not going to break my neck in the rush to add these to my collection.  I was wondering if I might feel differently once the swatches started to appear.  Here’s some from Scrangie (who can basically make me want anything) and Nail Stories.  I’m still not lemming them, maybe my nail polish lem has been broken?

What about you?  Are you excited for the China Glaze Prismatic Collection?

The soon-to-be released Hunger Games collection from China Glaze has been setting the nail polish blogs alight with swatches and banter about the names and how they relate to the book and upcoming film.  I’ve got two shades to show you today; Agro – a metallic olive shot through with a heap of gold flecks and Dress Me Up – a dusty rose creme.

Agro* is a beautiful shade, not hugely unique but the formula is beautifully done.  If I’d been a little bit more careful in application, this could have squeezed through as a single-coater but the photo above demonstrates two coats to cover a couple of thin patches.  There’s not too many golden greens that look good against my cool skintone but thankfully this one doesn’t give me any issues at all.

Dress Me Up* is a simple dusty rose creme, I’m not a huge fan of these shades though I know many are.  Personally, I’d rename it Dress Me Up… Grandma.  The formula on this one is a little off – thick but runny, almost like it’s overcompensating for being on the thick side.  Again, this is a two-coater and the coverage is incidentally, pretty great.

There are a total of 12 colours in the collection, I’ve already placed my order for Fast Track and Harvest Moon as my next permanent additions to my beloved Helmer.

China Glaze is available to buy at Sallys or Beauty4Nails-Body (which has to be the worst name for a shop, ever).

Are you tempted by any of the shades in the new Hunger Games collection?

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China Glaze & Hunger Games Collection: Colours from the Capitol (Agro and Dress Me Up)