Milani Rad Purple

Milani Rad Purple was one of the neons that came out last summer. These were all in opaque bottles. Kind of weird, but I was glad I snagged this, because not only is it a red-toned purple, which I love, but it's an awesome jelly! Seriously, for me this is right up there with New York Summer Amaranth. It's a perfect jelly - you'll see how light and squishy it is at the tips! So, being a jelly, you should know if you read my blog enough that this will have VNL. It does, even after three coats. I'm okay with that, and since this is billed as a neon, it definitely dried matte. Since I like neons shiny, I slapped a coat of Revlon Quick Dry Top Coat on it. As you can see from the photo, super shiny!
As if this wasn't enough awesome for me, I decided to do a little layering, and added a coat of Pure Ice Busted. Too sheer to wear on its own, it's an awesome layering polish - and combined with Rad Purple, it's magic!
I can't tell you how much I love this. I got so many compliments on it!
Speaking of compliments, I went to get my hair cut and my brows done yesterday, and all of the girls were oohing over my pedicure - which, of course, I do my own. I used Sonia Kashuk Taunting Teal and Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Set The Stage. I'll have to show off this combo on my fingernails!
Alright, enough blathering. On to photos!

Hopefully you can see how Busted flashes both pink and purple! SO cool.

China Glaze Flying Dragon (Neon)

Okay, so Mary of Swatch & Learn tells me there are two formulations of Flying Dragon - and I have the new one. Apparently the older version is more of a proper purple, where the new is definitely magenta leaning - this is a purple with a LOT of red in it!
Flying Dragon is billed as a neon, so in case you weren't aware, neons dry to a semi-matte finish. If you don't like that, simply slap on a shiny top coat like I did and you're good to go. In my opinion it's MUCH more stunning shiny - you're just not doing the polish justice and you probably won't like it matte. This has the most amazing pink and blue glitter in it. I am totally fangirling over this polish. If you like purple at all, you need this. Two coats here, and a direct sunlight photo as well as a macro.

Now. Everyone and their mom has probably heard polish bloggers complain about photographing purple, because we can NEVER GET IT PHOTO ACCURATE. I'm still in total awe that this came out exactly like it looks on my nails. I might die. Do you guys have this and love it? Do you have the older version, or the more red version?

OCC Radiate and China Glaze Oxidized Aqua

This is my first OCC (Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics) polish ever! The always lovely and sweet Jess of Polish Insomniac recently sent me a random act of kindness package that included this hothothot polish. Radiate is a neon coral - somewhere in the middle of orange and pink. It is a jelly, so there's a little bit of VNL - but not a lot, considering I only used two coats here. I added a shiny top coat to this, because as with most neons, Radiate dries to a satin matte.
I wanted to play a bit with my new China Glaze metallic crackles, so I decided to top this with Oxidized Aqua. Holy HOTNESS this is great!

I decided to include that bottle shot of Oxidized Aqua, it's SO pretty. I love this combo. I don't know if you're sick of crackles - I myself am not - but these metallic ones I picked up are awesome.

Nail Art: Neon Splatter

Okay, so a few days ago Jen at The PolishAholic posted a super cute neon splatter mani and tutorial. As soon as I snagged some straws I had to give this a try!
I used four polishes plus my base for this one. As a base, I used Revlon's Matte Suede shade, Powder Puff. It's a white with a hint of purple duochrome and it's super squishy! I should swatch this alone for the blog. The four shades I used for my splatters were China Glaze Sun Worshipper and Flip Flop Fantasy, and Sinful Colors Irish Green and Dream On. I think this could be cute for a spring/Easter type mani, as well as Jen's awesome blood spatter one.
One thing I want to say, do NOT use styrofoam plates for your polish drops. Eats right through, hahaha! I only had styrofoam on hand when I started, and I had to quit. What a mess. (You guys probably already realized this, but me - I can be a dingbat sometimes.) You'll see, too, that my poor Powder Puff has spatters of Dream On on the bottle! This got everywhere before I started to get the hang of it.

And a rare picture of my thumb - it's always kind of awkward to photograph with the rest of my nails. My thumb and ring finger were my two favorites in this one. I LOVE how squishy and neon and eighties this is. Where's my neon pink ripped off the shoulder shirt? My plastic bangles and earrings??

Layering: Sinful Colors Summer Peach and Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure

Sinful Colors Summer Peach is from the big neon display. I painted two coats over a white base, and of course, it dries to a matte satin finish. I would have slapped some top coat on and gone on my merry way, but I was looking at it, and wondered what it would look like with some flakies. Of course, out came the Hidden Treasure. I had FIRE on my nails! This was so awesome, I wore it for four days before I had to take it off, or go mad. That's some kind of record for me, honestly.

You know, I switched over to the new editor, and it still looks like it's compressing my photos at a lower quality. Ugh. Have any of you tried layering anything over neons? This was so much fun!

Sinful Colors Summer Neon Display!

Okay guys, for anyone interested - I've got a photo of the new Sinful Colors summer neon display I was talking about! I'll post it, and then talk about the colors.

You can click to make this bigger, if you like. If for any reason you would like to view an even bigger image, just let me know. This is of course taken in artificial light with flash. Without was just too dark!

So the colors, left to right are: Dream On, Pink, Neon Melon, Summer Peach, Irish Green, Fusion Neon, and Cream Pink. The ones I know for sure are repromotes are Dream On, Irish Green, and Cream Pink. I *think* that they might have had a version of Neon Melon before, but I'm not 100% so if anyone can verify? That would be awesome!

The stripers, I didn't check to see if there were names for them - but they're definitely the striper version of the polish colors displayed. There are more colors behind the front row, so there's a neon yellow, neon orange, neon pink, neon green, neon purple. I *think* that's the extent of the stripers. There may have been a couple shades of neon pink, I didn't look too deeply.

These were in an endcap type display at Walgreen's, as you can see - right next to the core line display!

I hope that you guys find this helpful. 

EDITED: Special thanks to Madeline for letting me know about Neon Melon, she says she'd purchased it two years ago from Cherry Culture! So I was right, it's definitely a repromote.

Sinful Colors Neon Melon

Okay, so if you've seen Sinful Colors in Walgreen's over the last couple of years, you'll know they often put out a summer display of neons. Well, this year, there is a big display - looks like an endcap! Pretty awesome. I'm going to try to get some photos snapped of the display. It has art stripers, too! Pretty cool. Some are repromotes, but I am not sure if all of them are.
Anyway, I picked up a couple, and tonight I have for you Neon Melon. This is an eye searing highlighter yellow color - AWESOME. I can't wait to slap this onto my toes! This dries flat, chalky matte - well, it IS a neon! I used a white polish for a base, to make it really pop, and I used two coats of Neon Melon. I am showing you this with top coat, because I can't abide it flat.

Two shots in shade, one in direct sunlight. You all probably know by now how infamously hard it is to capture a neon properly, but this will give you some idea! I've got a few more of these to show you. Has anyone else seen the big Walgreen's display??

China Glaze Blue Sparrow

Hope y'all aren't tired of China Glaze yet - did I mention I'm a fangirl? Yeah. This is Blue Sparrow, from the Ink collection of 2008. I also have Flying Dragon from this collection to show you, my two favorites. I used to have all of these, but I didn't really care for the others much, so I passed them on to better homes. This, as with Flying Dragon, dries mostly matte, so I slapped top coat on it. I LOVELOVELOVELOVE this shade, it's one of my all time favorites, when you put top coat on it, it just comes to life. It's a turquoise blue squishy jelly with true aqua shimmer and it's a stunner. I used two coats here.

You can see the shimmer pretty well in that shot with the bottle featured. Click to enlarge, if you like! Anyone else have Blue Sparrow and love it as much as I do? It's in my top 20 polishes, for sure.