China Glaze Spring 2010 Up And Away Collection Preview!

I'm so excited I don't even know how to start this post. I just received my samples of China Glaze's upcoming spring collection, "Up & Away" and as soon as I saw them a wave of happiness swept over me! These are seriously gorgeous and the promo pic of these does not do them justice. They are utter creme perfection.


Flyin' High. This is kind of in between a bright sky blue and an aqua-looking teal. I'd say it's more blue- it's closer to Shower Together than it is to Custom Kicks. Whatever the exact shade is, it's gorgeous, glossy and so, so happy looking. The name "Flyin' High" makes me think of a line from my favorite Children of Bodom song to listen to when I'm sad... and this is so completely opposite of that song it makes me laugh. I know, random, right? I can't help that that's the first thing that popped into my head when I saw Flyin' High.


Four Leaf Clover. Super amazing awesome bright nearly-neon teal green creme. My picture is not really accurate to how this color actually looks. It is so bright and vibrant that it freaked out my camera. Seriously! My camera couldn't even focus on this, this one picture is the only shot that even remotely turned out! That is definitely a measure of how awesome this polish is. Picture it much more green, almost neon teal. Deeper with more pigment. You just have to see this one in person. It's... It's... I don't even have a word for it, it's so good... It's über, that's what it is. Green lovers, I'd call this a must have. Definitely.

Grape Pop. Bright medium candy purple creme. What a perfect purple. It's a little bit less blue-y than it looks in my picture, but not by too much. It leans on the side of blue-purple more than red-purple, but it's pretty close to center. This is one of the more unique purple cremes in my collection, the closest cousin to it would be Rescue Beauty Lounge Mismas.


Happy Go Lucky. Bright lemon yellow creme. Another winner. It's quite possibly the best yellow creme in my collection. It's the perfect shade of bright sunshine yellow for my skintone, and it goes on streak free and perfect in two coats. I can't say that about a lot of yellows. China Glaze must have been working overtime on their yellow formula, cause this is just about as good as it gets.

Heli-Yum. Bright deep pink creme. China Glaze calls this shade raspberry, and I'd say that's a pretty good description. It reminds me of raspberry sauce, maybe a little lighter than the actual stuff, more like a raspberry candy. Another super happy looking shade. This one has a jelly-like quality to it, with that kinda shiny-squishy look, but it's too dense and opaque for me to consider it a true jelly. Oh, and I love the name of this one. Hahaha!


High Hopes. Bright pinky-orangey coral creme. China Glaze calls this one Guava, but I'm not entirely sure what color guava is. I've eaten a guava before and it's kind of a rich pink color on the inside... I'm going to call it coral. Bright, bold coral. Very flattering.

Lemon Fizz. Pale lemon sorbet yellow. A pale yellow that doesn't make my hands look like death! Yay! This is very light but it's not exactly soft. It's crisp- it has a very fresh and... solid? bold? look. It has a little hint of honeydew green in it, and I think that sets it apart from a lot of the other pale yellows in my collection. Also applies like a dream, extremely rare for yellows, and pastel yellows especially.

Light As Air. Very light lavender creme. This one makes me think of really fancy petit-fours with little sugared violets on top. This is a really cool color. Like the others, it's a light shade but since it's so dense and stark and creamy it has a very bold look. It really stands out. Again, I'm pleased to find such a nice light lavender that doesn't make my hands look like death! Normally shades like this aren't great on my skintone, this one is different.

Peachy Keen. Light peach creme. Before you ask, I checked, it's not even close to MAC Seasonal Peach. This is pretty unique in my collection- I've never really thought about it before but I just don't have many peaches in my stash. How odd. Anyway, this is a touch paler in real life- a lot like the bottle color.


Re-Freshmint. Pale mint green. This is a really light shade of mint green, but not as light or as blue as Essie Mint Candy Apple. It is more yellow toned than blue toned and it is fabulous. Mint green shades seem to be huge right now, and I think that this is one of the nicer ones on my skintone.

Something Sweet. Soft light pink with a little bit of lilac. See, this one is such a contradiction! On one hand, it's soft, light, girly, delicate baby pink... But on the other hand it's stark, dense, bold mod 60's vintage pink that really seems anything but soft. It's kind of white-out creamy, but very easy to apply.

Sugar High. Nearly-neon candy pink. I think this is just about as bright as pink can get before it becomes a true neon. This is the only one that gave me a little trouble in application- it seemed a little sticky. If I would have let my coats dry a little longer in between, I probably wouldn't have had much of a problem, but hey, I'm impatient when it comes to my nails! This shade of pink makes me think of all the Barbie stuff I had as a kid. Remember how they used to come with a plastic hairbrush, and it was almost this exact shade of hot pink?


The formula on these was excellent. Outstanding, even. The key word here is 'pigment'. These are positively loaded with pigment and they are very thick. That's a good thing. That means one and two coat coverage. A lot of these shades did give me one coat coverage- Four Leaf Clover, Flyin' High, Grape Pop, Sugar High, but I did two coats of each. They didn't need more than two coats. Like I mentioned before, the consistency of these polishes is very thick, but it isn't runny like it used to be. These actually kinda reminded me of Rescue Beauty Lounge's creme formula- thick, smooth and pigmented. The drying time on these is slightly inconsistent, though- some dried very fast and some took about the same amount of time as usual. Maybe they do have a little neon in them.

Overall, I am incredibly impressed with this entire collection. China Glaze have really outdone themselves. Based on the promo picture, I could have gone either way with these- they looked really cute, but they also seemed to be 'normal' pastel cremes. I'm not much of a pastel wearer. And then I thought, "These are all cremes. They could be really boring." But these... these aren't wimpy, boring barely-noticeable pastel cremes. The super dense bold creme base in all of these makes the colors stand out as if you had applied them over white. I keep using the word 'bold' over and over again because that's all I can think of to describe the finish of these. Bold and dense and solid.

I love the overall theme of this collection as well. I mean... let's face it... A lot of us are pretty bummed out right now. The main theme China Glaze wanted to convey with this collection was happiness. The words that come to mind are happy, lighthearted, candy, fun, cheerful, whimsical, carefree... Up and away, lifting your mood, taking you away, there's even a bundle of brightly colored balloons on the picture. I really needed this collection! It honestly brought a smile to my face and I am really looking forward to wearing full manicures of each and every color included.

China Glaze did a great job on these. The finish is impeccable, the formula is improved, the colors are ridiculously happy and cheerful, and Four Leaf Clover should win some sort of award for being awesome.

I don't know the exact release date for this collection, but since it's a Spring collection, I'm going to guess late December or early January. If I do find out the actual release date, I'll update the post with that information.