Okay, so I’m starting a new thing for the blog this week. This started somewhat out of necessity; my Manicure Monday mani would start to show signs of wear: chips, cracks, peeling, and some would have to be totally redone. At the same time, I would have a new polish or two or five I’d want to try, so I’d scrap the mani altogether at the end of the week and try out something new. I’ve come to the point now where I have nearly five hundred polishes, and if I polish my nails once a week, it would take me almost ten years to use every polish (a number that increases every week or so). This new feature, Swatch Saturday, is a way for me to use some of these polishes that I wouldn’t get to use in my normal manicure routine for quite some time, and to represent them more accurately, away from the confines of nail art. I’m going to start at the top of the polish list and work my way down.

This inaugural Swatch Saturday kicks off with a glow in the dark polish from American Apparel called Neptune. I bought it when I was Atlanta visitng my boyfriend for my birthday. For whatever reason, my city doesn’t have any American Apparel stores, but I’ve seen their polishes all over the nail polish internet, so when I went in, I didn’t even look at the clothes. I went right for the polish, bought six bottles, and walked out.

All non-glowy photos were taken indoors with sunlight.

Neptune is shown here with three coats, covered by three coats of Seche Vite. As you can see, even with three coats, my nail line is still visible, and another coat would probably have given me more opacity. Apart from that, the color is really nice for a glow in the dark polish.

Monster teeth.

I am kind of ashamed of these.

I read the manual for this.

I had a hard time getting these glow in the dark action shots, but I had to try. I shut myself in the darkest room in my house — my bedroom closet — with my camera. Well, first I had to read the manual to find out how to change the shutter speed. Then I locked myself in the closet. Then I got a bunch of horrid pictures. Yeah. I even got the tripod out for this, and they’re still bad. It doesn’t matter, though. You can still see the glow. I got it close enough.

To be honest, I just really missed having glow in the dark nails. I wore this once over a blue glitter polish for a Halloween party (with orange accents, we’ll discuss this next week), and when I went to bed that night, my boyfriend just laughed. “Your nails are foolish,” he said. I don’t care what he thinks. It’s fun waggling my fingers around in the dark. Also, I think I like them best when it’s only sort of dark, when I can still see the blue, but they’re just slightly glowing, like I have uranium on my nails. I love the novelty of it. Thankfully, I have like two more of these to do.