China Glaze Lemon Fizz

Lemon Fizz was released last year as part of China Glaze's spring Up & Away collection. It's a light, buttery, pastel yellow creme. I'm sure most people know the whole song and dance about how difficult most yellows are to apply. How they're streaky, chalky, lumpy, or any number of other things. But Lemon Fizz wasn't bad!

I used three coats and I'm very happy with how it turned out. It was a little streaky, but it evened out nicely as I put more coats on. I did find that it was really hard to get it to even out nicely if I didn't have a steady hand, so my right hand looks pretty bad. But I'm pleased with my left hand, and as that's the swatching hand, that's really all that matters!

This is really not the most flattering color on me. I'm not sure if it's because I'm so pale, or because I have so much pink in my skin, but it looks kind of funny in person. I still love it, however.

SpaRitual Chill

Chill is the second SpaRitual polish that I bought. It's really a medium lavender shade, I promise. This one was really, really tricky to photograph. It always turned out much more blue than it really is. I took 35 pictures before finally settling on this one.

It has the same nice application that Dreams Becoming Reality had, and the same brush and cap, although being a mini, the cap was sort of strange to maneuver. I did two coats of Chill for this picture.

I wish that this had photographed more true to life. It looks like a rather boring shade of periwinkle in all the pictures, so I tried to make as accurate a swatch as I could just in Photoshop. This swatch is more like what Chill looked like on me.

Chill is much darker than polishes like China Glaze Light as Air or OPI Rumple's Wiggin, so if those gave you lobster hands, this might be a better polish for you. It's also brighter and slightly more blue than OPI Done Out in Deco. Purple is my favorite color, and I do like Chill, but it's not one of my favorites.

SpaRitual Dreams Becoming Reality

This is my first experience with SpaRitual. I didn't leave the house planning to buy any today, or even thinking I would find some, but when I found them and saw Dreams Becoming Reality, I knew I had to buy it.

Dreams Becoming Reality is a dark, slightly murky teal creme. It makes me think of a peacock! It went on like a dream, easily covering the nail. I did three coats, but I probably could have gotten away with two. It dries to a very, very shiny finish.

I really, really like the cap and the brush. The cap is rubberized, and tapers upwards, with small grippy ridges on the sides. The brush is a bit shorter and more densely packed than China Glaze brushes, and it reminds me quite a bit of the Orly brushes.

SpaRitual polishes are a bit more expensive than what I usually pay for polishes. I paid $12.50 for the full sized bottle, but there are places online where you can get them cheaper. Some shades also come in mini sizes, which are 5ml/0.17 fl oz., but the full sized bottles are a better deal. I bought a mini in Chill, of which I will have swatches for you next time!

Take a look at how very shiny and reflective Dreams Becoming Reality is. Like wee, distorted mirrors!

Wet N Wild Fast Dry Teal of Fortune

This is my first time using a Wet N Wild polish since I was really young. I have to say, I'll be buying WNW polish much more often after the experience I've had with Teal of Fortune!


This is a bright blue/teal glass-fleck polish, and I've seen around the internet that it's a dupe for Zoya Charla and OPI Catch Me in Your Net, which is why I bought it. I did two coats, but next time I will do three, because out in the sun you can definitely see some spots that it didn't cover completely.

I like the brush on these Fast Dry polishes. It's shorter and seems a bit thicker than the China Glaze brush, which is what I'm most used to. When they say Fast Dry on the bottle, they're not kidding. It does dry super fast, and I didn't need to wait around between coats.

When I was initially Googling for swatches of Teal of Fortune, I came across several where the swatcher had layered it over black. It looks really great, and is definitely something that I'll have to try soon. It's just sheer enough that I think you could get a nice ombre manicure out of it as well.

China Glaze Grape Juice

I love this polish. Grape Juice was released in China Glaze's Summer Days collection in 2009, which is one of my top favorite collections. It's a grape purple with glass-fleck shimmer.

This is 3 coats. The only thing that I don't like about glass-fleck polishes is that they tend to go on sheer, and you have to build them up. When you look at them in the sun, they tend to look watery and not very impressive. For this reason, I am including a picture of Grape Juice in the shade, where I think it looks really great. The picture to the left is Grape Juice in direct sunlight.

The sheerness of glass-flecks makes them a great choice to layer over other colors. Lots of bloggers seem to like layering a glass-fleck over a black creme, and it looks really great. I wish I had thought to do one nail that way, just to have a comparison. Perhaps a future post can be photos of all of my glass-flecks over black.

Here is Grape Juice in shaded natural light.