China Glaze Summer 2013 Neon Jellies - The Plain Swatches

Greetings All!

As soon as I saw the PR for these polishes, I got a little bit excited. My love for jellies is no secret, but I think it can sometimes be hard to find jelly polishes, unless you know what you are looking for. These were described as jellies right from the off, so as soon as I found them online, I ordered all six from the collection!

I did a pretty epic swatching marathon of them - plain, over white (to test the neon), and also some nail art. However I've had to break it up a bit, because there were just too many pictures. So today you get the plain swatches, and tomorrow the rest, probably in 2 posts (provided I edit the 10 million pictures I have lol).

I'll start by saying I'm not the biggest China Glaze fan. I know a lot of people rave about them, but apart from a few of their glitters, I've found them to be...fairly average. This collection hasn't really changed my mind. Also, neons are, like, impossible to photograph accurately (I've seen others having the same problem), plus my camera is pretty rubbish colour-wise anyway, so these aren't 100% colour accurate. I would say about 80% accurate. Apologies!

These is also vnl ahead (duh), so if you don't like that sort of thing, look away now!

So let's dive straight in, shall we?

Are You Jelly? is a bright purple, slightly more pinkish than my camera acknowledged, but then it usually thinks purples are blue so we're just lucky it came out purple lol. This polish was incredibly streaky, like, bacon streaky. I needed 3 coats to even it all out.

I guess it was kind of worth the streakiness in the end, because the end product is quite nice, but it was still very frustrating, and it has also almost obliterated the jelly effect. Only the slightest hint of vnl remains, but 2 coats was a total mess.

Heat index is neon pink, very bright in the bottle, not quite as bright on the nail (which I didn't mind personally!). This is 3 coats. It was a little streaky, but not as bad as Are You Jelly?

This is more like it! It has the squishiness, the hint of vnl but a decent amount of colour, very jelly. Really summery too. Perfect for some tropical style nails.

Isle See You Later is a bright blue, in the bottle at least. I don't think I've ever seen anything so sheer before! This is 5 thick coats.

5 coats, can you believe it?! It's a shame because it is actually a really nice colour, it would be great for some ocean themed nails, but my goodness! You should have seen one coat - it basically looked like clear polish! It did dry really quickly, but ain't no one got time for that! Maybe I would wear it as a jelly sandwich, but only if I had the whole afternoon free to paint my nails. Because it would take forever.

Keepin' It Teal is, well, teal I guess. It looks mostly green to me, but there's a hint of something in there, so let's go with teal lol. This is 3 coats.

I like this one a lot. I feel a bit tarty, with my tips out for everyone to see (nail pun wooo!), but this is how I would wear it! The formula was pretty OK with this one - not too streaky, decent coverage. You could go with 4 coats to hide the vnl a bit more if you wanted, and it looks quite squishy. I don't have a green jelly, so I'm pretty happy with this one.

Shell-O is a neon orange that leans a little towards coral, and was the hardest to photograph. Even with a bit of tweaking, this isn't really too colour accurate. This is 3 coats.

I have no idea why this looks like it's 2 different colours - in real life it was a uniform orange, not pink at the base! There's barely any vnl with this, but I needed 3 coats again to even out the streaks. It's another very summery colour, but orange isn't really my favourite colour to wear as a base, unless it's Halloween! It would be quite nice with a bit of glitter though, holding a cocktail!

You Drive Me Coconuts is another pink, brighter and slightly bluer that Heat Index. This one really did drive me nuts - streaky, draggy, and not what I would describe as a jelly at all. 2 coats would have done opacity wise, but I needed 3 to even out the patches, of which there were several.

As a neon pink creme, I would say it's OK, streaky as anything and a pain to apply, but a good enough result. But as one of two pinks in a jelly collection? Fail! Why not another colour, China Glaze? A nice paprika red would have been much better, or even a yellow.

So this is a pretty hit and miss collection. I like maybe half of them. A lot of that is the formula though. If they were proper jellies with a decent formula, I would be a lot happier with them. They did all dry very quickly (like, SV quickly), which was handy for the multiple coats needed, but China Glaze definitely haven't converted me with this collection.

My recommendations would be Heat Index, Keepin' It Teal and Shell-O, because at least they act like jellies and weren't too terrible. The other three? Are You Jelly? is nice but you need to have patience when applying, Isle See You Later is, just, no, and ...Coconuts, well if you have a neon pink already, you son't really need this. Unless you want an opaque pink neon (I tried it over white and it looks exactly the same, so there's that!)

I bought these polishes myself, and all opinions are my own!