China Glaze- Flying Dragon is from the INK collection, released in the Summer of 2008.
It's a medium purple neon that contains blue and pink shimmer/ microglitter particles. It looks beautiful in the bottle, and sounds interesting, right? Well, let's see.
Artificial light, two coats:
This dries quickly to a matte finish, like most neons do, and when matte, the blue and purple shimmer doesn't really show up prominently. Instead, it sort of sinks into the base. Don't get me wrong, it is visible in certain lighting, but you have to be looking for it, and it's not shimmery or shiny at all like normal shimmer should be. It doesn't catch the light. In the end, the effect is more like subtle flecks, not shimmer.
The base also dries darker than the bottle color- to more of a plum, while the bottle color is more of a bright warm purple.
Window-filtered daylight:
See how you can see the "shimmer," but it's not particularly shiny? Kind of odd. It's also not much of a neon like it's supposed to be- much darker and duller than bottle color.
Outside, shade:
Formula: It dries quickly, so if you also work relatively quickly, it applies to the nail relatively easily. It's also pretty pigmented.
My first coat turned out slightly streaky, but not horrible by any means. The second coat definitely took care of all the patchy areas, although its self-leveling abilities leave much to be desired. The bottom line is that the formula is workable, but very mediocre- bordering on below par.
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Between the polish drying much darker than bottle color, and the weird non-shimmery shimmer particles, this one was a big disappointment for me. There are some swatches around that make it look pretty amazing, but in person, this one is a dud, and skippable, in my opinion!
I don't know. Sometimes I hate it, sometimes I love it. It is definitely a weird polish, but regarding the formula I have to say that mine's not that bad. I'm still very undecided about it!
ReplyYea, it's not horrible! I was just expecting something different, I guess.
Oh what a bummer :( It's a nice purple though.
ReplyIt is decent once you get a topcoat on, but I guess my expectations were too high!
It looks really pretty. Too bad you weren't happy with it:(
ReplyJust one of those things. :)
Trying it now. Super disappointed at how dark it dries and how it turns out to be matte :(
Reply