Some of you may have already heard of the tragedy that befell my nails last week. My left hand pinkie nail broke while I was doing research for my internship. This happened, of course, after I made this post tooting my own horn about the fabulousness of my natural nail strength. Hubris: it’ll do it to you ever time.

At first I was all woe-is-me-wah but now I’ve accepted my new short nails and have decided to embrace them. I’m in the nail polish school of thought that reserves darker colors for shorter nails, not per se, but just as general rule it’s my personal preference. However, I loved my long nails so much I didn’t want to cut them in order to break out my vampies. My unexpected break gave me an excuse to not only break out my vampies but also to put aside my anti-strengthener rhetoric and give some of my dusty strengtheners a try. Nailtek is 25% off right now at my local CVS and I have a brand new untried Color Club Vitabase. Might as well give it a shot, not like my nails can get any shorter than they are now so I have nothing to lose.

Without any further delay I present you the first image of my new shorties in vampies.

Although Color Club Killer Curves and Essie Wicked look dissimilar in the image, they look almost exactly the same in person. They also share deep red as a base color. They both have good albeit similar application so I don’t prefer one over the other. Essie Clutch Me if You Can looks dupish to the others in the bottle but it’s visibly a dark berry red on the nail where as the others border on being almost-blacks. I had to use 4 coats to get Essie Clutch Me if You Can’s depth of color to even out. Which is strange because I wouldn’t classify the polish as streaky. It applied well but for whatever reason it took 4 coats to get the color to even out to be the same shade throughout the nail. The big disappointment here is Essie Material Girl. I had HORRIBLE cuticle drag with it even though I waited ages between coats. To get it to look normal I had to battle the application to an unheard of 6 coats. That’s right, 6 coats.

Now, my Essie Material Girl isn’t a full size bottle, it’s a mini. I’ve heard a lot of people complain about mini bottles (particularly OPI minis) being of a lower quality than their full size counterparts. I’ve personally never had that problem with any mini I’ve tried. I’m hestitant to blame my application troubles on the fact that this was a mini Essie. Especially since Essie is notorious for its streakiness and difficulty of application anyway. The simple fact is that I think minis are the best thing that ever happened to nail polish (with the exception of Seche Vite.)

To be honest, I just don’t know what the issue was with Essie Material Girl. I plan to eventually give it a shot using a good base coat like Barielle Camo. Do any of you guys own Material Girl? Have you had similar results? Do you feel like minis are defunct in comparison to full size bottles? Anyone had bad luck with a particular brand’s minis?

It’s so difficult to take good images of neon and bright shades. Color Club Orange Revenge is much brighter and much more neon in person. China Glaze Japanese Koi leans towards red. The only true orange here is Orly Orange Punch but there was something seriously wrong with my bottle. There were a ton of weird white flecks inside the bottle. I’ve never seen anything like it. I had to redo the nail over and over because the flecks kept showing up on the nail. I imagine doing a full mani would prove impossible. All these polishes had great application, minus the flecks, of course.

In my infinite nail polish nerdiness, I somehow ended up three neon purple polishes. Well, four actually, I didn’t include China Glaze Flying Dragon in the comparison because it’s unique enough that everyone should own it, regardless of whether one owns other neon purples. The image above is misleading, Color Club Power Play and New York Summer Super Violet aren’t as magentish in person as they are in the picture and both look very similar to Zoya Juicy in the bottle. My favorite of the three is definitely Power Play. It only took 2 coats to get bottle color, while the other colors took 3+ coats. Super Violet is a close second. Both

Super Violet and Power Play are high quality and incredibly affordable. My personal opinion is that they are similar enough that owning both is probably not justifiable. Juicy is meh… but of course, I’m biased because I’m predisposed to disliking Zoya. It is no surprise that I was not impressed by Juicy.

These swatches are in direct sunlight. New York Summer Super Violet took 3 coats, Color Club Power Play took 2 coats, Zoya Juicy took 4 coats (note the cuticle drag). All these colors dry somewhat matte so I also added a layer of Color Club Vivid top coat.

Which color do you guys like best? Do you have a favorite neon purple not mentioned here?

This isn’t the entire Flower Power Collection – these swatches are just the colors that are going to be available in the 7-pack that Color Club released recently. The collection in its entirety includes just about every neon shade you can possibly imagine. The entire collection is really amazing. Not included here but worthy of mention from this collection are Wild Child, Blue Light, 220 Volts, and Bizerk Turq. Check them out if you haven’t already. All these swatches are 2 coats of color and 1 coat of Color Club Vivid Color Intensifying Top Coat. Vivid is a really great top coat to use for matte drying neons. It really brings the color to life.

Limelight is a really vibrant neon green. I usually have a hard time with the application of neons, especially greens, but this applied really smooth. It’s tough to capture neon colors on film so none of these pictures do these colors any justice. I *love* this green.

LOVE Orange Revenge – it’s perfect. The neon collection has two other great shades of orange but Orange Revenge is the most vibrant and unique. Orange polish is definitely really trendy right now so if you’re in the market for a neon orange, this is an excellent (and inexpensive) one to pick up.

Power Play is one of the more popular shades from the Flower Power Collection. This picture isn’t the best depiction of the color – it’s more hot purple in real life. It’s a really beautiful color, not subtle but not the flashiest of the bunch either. It’s a good compromise for people who want to try neons.

This is my current NOTD – it’s gorgeous in all its neon flashiness. It pulls a little towards orange as opposed to a true fuchsia, but it’s still really great. I know a lot of people feel that this color is too much for tips… I don’t agree… but you can’t argue with taste. I double dare you to wear it on your tips but if you really just can’t do it, try it as a pedi.

The Flower Power Collection has several excellent pinks. I plan to do a side by side comparison of all of them soon. Pink Lust reminds me a bit of the pinks from OPI Indian Collection with just a little more zing.

Lazer Pink is my favorite pink from this collection. It’s a classic neon Barbie Pink. Alas… there is a difference in color batches a la the OPI Bubble Bath fiasco. I have two bottles of Lazer Pink. One is brighter than the other, but both are very pretty. I’ll post the comparison when I compare the pinks.

This collection is available at both Head2Toe and 8ty8.

Special thanks to Color Club.

China Glaze did it first with the Ink Collection. Nubar has the Get Hot collection, Color Club has the Flower Power collection, even Essie ventured away from nudes and pinks to do a mini collection, Neon Shorts, this summer.

Neon is definitely not in everyone’s nail polish comfort zone. If you want to ease yourself into this trend, try wearing a neon orange or red similar to the one Rihanna is wearing in this picture. (look for Color Club – Sexsea or China Glaze – Japanese Koi)

Those of you who want to go all out neon, like Rihanna’s nails in picture below, try China Glaze – Celtic Sun.

If having neon nails is something you want to look into but you aren’t sure whether you’ll like it, don’t pour tons of money into it by purchasing expensive brands. Instead, take a trip to your local drug store. This trend has already been picked up by the less expensive brands. Sinful Colors, a mainstay at Walgreens and a very excellent inexpensive brand, has just released their neon collection. If you have a Claire’s Icing at your local mall, go pick up their recently released neon five pack.

I love neon. Were it not for my summer internship with the State Attorney’s Office, I would never take these colors off – but I know it’s not for everyone. What do you guys think about it, are you going to rock the neon this summer? If yes, what are your favorite colors?

Color Club is getting ready to launch mini sets! I personally love minis because buying minis means I can hoard different colors without hurting my wallet too badly. They have 4 mini sets planned.

The Natural Nail Kit which will include mini nail treatments for healthy and long-lasting manis and pedis.

The Mighty Brights will include their 4 best selling colors from the Flower Power collection. This is perfect since the trend right now is bright vibrant neons. This mini set will be perfect for people that express reservations about taking the plunge into the awesome, yet flashy, world of neon colors.

The Frenchies mini set will include 2 best selling french mani colors, Milky White, the base coat that was released with the Sweet Seduction collection, and Vivid, a brand new top coat with optical brighteners that is supposed give life to dull and fading manis, as well as, add a higher level of color intensity to fresh manis. I’m pretty excited to try out this top coat.

Finally, the Best Sellers mini set will include 4 of Color Club’s most popular polishes.

The MOST exciting news of all is that Color Club’s new fall collection is due out really soon! I’ll post more about this collection as soon as I find out more information!

Ah. I’m so excited, I can hardly contain myself. Color Club is probably one of the only nail polish brands of which I have nothing negative to say. Love the formula, love the colors, LOVE the price.

Source: Color Club