China Glaze It’s Alive

The star product of the Halloween collection from China Glaze:

This was two coats. China Glaze It’s Alive has plenty of olive glitter suspended in an army/murky green jelly. The application was good and dries fairly quickly. Not too thick for a jelly as well but this eats top coat like crazy. It took me 2-3 thick coats of Poshe before it felt less gritty to the touch. A beautiful colour though that is well worth the effort of removing with foil and acetone remover.

 

NOTD: China Glaze Skyscraper

Just a quick NOTD!

natural light

with flash

China Glaze Skyscraper is from the recent Metro (Downtown) collection. It is such a ridiculously sparkly and gorgeous polish. It is chocked full of dense silver glitter bits in a blue/purple base. It goes on well, there was no need for extra layers – in fact this was a regular 2-coater (how very opaque!). The glitter dries down smooth even without top coat. Looks purple in some lights and blue in others. Very pretty and definitely worth keeping in your stash!

Swatch & Review: China Glaze Ahoy!

Been really sick for the past few days, didn’t really get the chance to blog since I was mostly sick in bed and only managed to feel better enough to head out on Sunday 😦

Was wearing China Glaze Ahoy! over the past few days. Please excuse any tipwear because this was like 3 days of wear.

2 coats:

Click to see closeups on microglitter

I wish my camera was able to capture these in their full glory. Ahoy! is a glass-flecked fuchsia-pink polish chocked full of hot pink microglitters even under indoor lights. Under sunlight however, the microglitters come to life as they appear gold and very sparkly. Super gorgeous when worn but the application was a little of a trouble because it was very goopy (like its popular predecessor – Ruby Pumps). Took a lot of effort just to get it to apply evenly (or it could be the lack of my hand-eye coordination since I was sick). Nonetheless, the formula for this wasn’t as good as the rest of the Anchors Away Collection.

Swatch & Review: OPI Who Needs A Prince + China Glaze White Cap

This is my polish for work. OPI WNAP on its own is too boring for my liking so I layered ChG White Cap over it.

Sigh. It looks too feminine and “bridal-like” for me.

OPI WNAP (2coats) + ChG White Cap (1 coat):

White Cap adds a nice touch of gold shimmers to the entire look. The gold shimmers are more visible under low lighting. Prettiness.

Backup Worthy: China Glaze Wagon Trail

Wagon Trail (2 coats):

Sharpened image for macro shot of the shimmers:

With flash:

All pictures above are taken in natural daylight unless otherwise stated and images are fully clickable.

I don’t know how to describe how much I love this colour. It is like a blackened olive-green with plenty of gold shimmers. Granted, it does look just like black in artificial or low lights but if you peer closely you can see that hint of very mossy olive green. This sort of dark colours are right up my alley! And this is the absolute first polish (Ok besides Ruby Pumps and that was 3 years ago) that I had seriously considered getting a back up for fear that it’d be discontinued.

The formula was typical that of China Glaze. It’s pigmented in a runny sort of way and 2 coats were sufficient to reach full opacity.

I really should shouldn’t I? It’s so gorgeous in an understated way. Everyone who likes dark polishes and olives should get this, and I am pretty sure it will look fantastic on a variety of skin tones.

China Glaze Anchors Away Collection Swatches

I picked up only 3 from the collection initially including Sea Spray, Pelican Grey and White Cap. I had since went on to order Ahoy after trying them out because I love the formulations in this collection! All swatches are 2 coats each with base coat and top coat.

Pelican Grey (topped with White Cap):

I wore Color Club’s Wild Orchid on my ring finger for comparison and contrast as these are the only greys I have in my collection. Pelican Grey is a very pale blue-toned grey and as you can see in the second swatch, the blue is really quite pronounced in an angle. From the bottle we can see faint micro-shimmer but the shimmers do not show up on the nail which is quite a pity.

Sea Spray:

Sea Spray is a dusty baby blue with very very micro silver sparkles in the bottle but barely noticeable on the nail. It comes off as a creme in my opinion. Also, it appears grey-er against my skin tone so much so that it looks like a blue-tinted grey under artificial lighting. The blue is more obvious in natural light. I am not too sure if this colour suits me as it tends to bring out a lot of red in my skin tone.

White Cap:

My favourite of the lot! This is like the nail polish version of the famous NARS Albatross highlighter. It is filled with gold shimmer in a jelly off-white base.. Just like Albatross. No I am not a fan of NARS Albatross, it doesn’t seem to work on my skin tone because of the gold shimmers, and the same goes for White Cap because the gold flashes are very obvious and too odd against my skin when I wear it alone. It, however, looks amazing and transforms any nail polish when you layer it over them (see above).

So far, I am rather pleased with how all these applied. They are incredibly creamy and smooth very unlike some China Glazes I have which can be rather thick and goopy. Overall a winning collection.

China Glaze Holo – 2NITE

I have this nail polish in my possession for quite some time already but I haven’t had the chance to try it out except for a hastily-done swatch on a finger when it first came in a parcel.

I finally decided to try it on my ten fingers yesterday and boy, am I IN LOVE.

It is a periwinkle blue holographic.. And I was sorely disappointed when I first wore it because instead of beautiful holos (that I was expecting), I saw nothing but a flat dull finish.

Let’s look at this in indirect sunlight:

With flash:

When the polish catches beams of the sunlight:

Such a beauty indeed.

Look at the flashes of glittery bits in this polish:

The application for this nail polish is really smooth and not goopy at all, unlike some of other China Glazes. This polish really surprised me because it looks rather dull in the bottle. I used 2 coats for total opacity which wasn’t hard to achieve as this is really pigmented.

Seriously. What’s not to love??

China Glaze Lemon Fizz

Just a quick update on my NOTD, I was wearing China Glaze’s Lemon Fizz on my tips yesterday because it matched the blazing weather 😛 This pastel yellow was released in 2010 in the Up & Away Collection in conjunction with the movie. Which I totally love by the way.

China Glaze Lemon Fizz

3 coats:

It’s such a vibrant and cheery colour even though it tends to bring out a lot of red in my fingers. Yellow is not something I’d opt to wear on my nails because just don’t go with my skintone. However this is a really pretty colour and I love it 🙂 I apologize for the discrepancies in colour, the second picture gives the most accurate swatch of the polish.

Application-wise, this was surprisingly even as pastels/cremes tend to give me a lot of application problems but this was rather smooth. The formula is a little thick and goopy though, I’d have preferred it if it was slightly runnier so I can have more control over the application.

China Glaze Ruby Pumps

One of my favourite reds! I got this when it first launched many many many years back and this never failed to be my go-to glitter red polish. However the formula in my bottle had thickened due to the storage and it was a little bit hard to apply without getting clumps.

China Glaze Ruby Pumps:

You can see how old mine is, judging from the worn out decals on the bottle 😦 I really need a new one or use a thinner to dilute this if I want to keep this 😛

This is red glitters in a red jelly base, it looks amazing in the sunlight. Very festive in my opinion, I totally love this! 😀

Pastel-lovin’

Received some China Glaze nail polishes from NailVibe a few days ago… A result of my obsession with pastel colours 😛 Was in a foul mood earlier on but after swatching these, my mood had turned for the better.

Well, what’s not to love about candy-coloured nail polishes?? 😛

Re-Fresh Mint:

This applies better than expected, like most pastels, it’s slightly streaky but 2 coats are sufficient for opaque coverage. It’s a true minty green in real life but my camera seemed to pull a lot more blue.

Something Sweet:

A baby pink creme. The formula for this is a little problematic, it was not only streaky but thick so it left quite a lot of bald spots upon the first two coats. The third coat managed to even everything out but on larger nails (like thumb nails) I think 4 coats are needed for even coverage.

Lemon Fizz:

Bright lovely yellow! This went on surprisingly well! 2 coats, very even coverage with some streaks but not very noticeable unless you look closely. Quite happy with this yellow, it reminds me of lemonade! And I really think the name of the polish is cute 😛

OPI Rumple’s Wiggin:

OPI has the best application amongst all. It goes on smoothest and has the most even coverage. 2 coats.

The colours look awesome together! 😀 Excuse the bad application skills, I am not usually a fan of pastels and I doubt I’m gonna keep them on my nails for long 😛 I actually really prefer vampy and dark colours or bright reds so… I guess I won’t be purchasing any more in future.