Spring is in the air, except for here in the Northeast where it’s, like, 40 degrees and I’m wearing a winter sweater. But nail collections are in full bloom, including the April SquareHue: the Bloom Collection.

Recap: SquareHue is a subscription service. For a monthly fee, they send you three full-size polishes, formulated and chosen by SquareHue. You don’t get a choice in color and you don’t know the colors in advance, although each month they put a promo picture and the name of the collection on the website, so you can make an educated guess. You can’t buy the previous polishes after the month is over, although maybe that will change in the future. It costs about the same as a Julep box, and you get far more polish by volume (3 x 0.5mL versus 3 x 0.28mL), but there are no cute add-ons or extras. You can suspend or pause the account, if you can’t foot it that month or the promo pic doesn’t thrill you (I’m on the fence about doing that for May, because I don’t know with that promo pic), and part of the proceeds go to charities: the current focus is preventing human trafficking and both helping victims and prosecuting criminals of it. SquareHue formulas are 3-free, so you can feel good about that, too (although I use Seche Vite as a top coat, so I’ll be birthing three-headed babies, I suppose).

This month’s box contained, as expected, spring colors of yellow, green, and purple, but I was pleasantly surprised when I went through my collection and found no actual duplicates. Each month’s polish names are themed; this one seems to be flower child, which makes sense.

Yellow Submarine is a lemon yellow creme; although I think it looks shimmery in the bottle, I couldn’t detect that shimmer on the nail. I love yellow cremes like whoa, but they look awful on me. So I had mixed feelings about this one, but now I can stop coveting every one I see online or in stores. The formula was pretty streaky; it took four coats to cover some nails, but that’s the way it goes with yellows of all brands, I think. I’m not sure I captured the color accurately in this photo, but it’s close.

Flower Power is a bright grass green creme. I’m not sure I’d wear this alone, as I think I look like I just mowed the lawn with my hands, but it’ll be a great accent color and would probably look better if my skin weren’t the color of xerox paper. The formula on this was the best of the three: easy coverage in two coats.

Finally, Groovy Love is a lavender-lilac creme, exactly the color of purple hyacinths. Lilacs are flattering to pretty much every skin tone, and especially to mine, and I can never have enough. This one is a welcome addition to my stash and my favorite of this collection. the formula was a little streaky, but I may not have mixed well; this photo is three coats. I did this one last and intend to wear it throughout the week.

You can’t get the Bloom Collection now, but close colors (not exact duplicates) would be
Yellow Submarine: butter LONDON Jasper, Revlon Sunshine Sparkle
Flower Power: essie Mojito Madness
Groovy Love: China Glaze Tarty for the Party, butter LONDON Scoundrel