China Glaze Prismatic Collection Swatches

Yeahh!  I have been waiting for these to come out and I have been lucky enough to be able to buy the whole set *does a happy dance* ohhh yeahhh!  So once the euphoria of having so much new and pretty bling arrive in one bundle, the real test was to see if they were as nice as we have all hoped they were going to be, or is there going to be a major anti climax approaching.  I'm sure by now everyone has seen the promo blurb.  This is what China Glaze say about these polishes in their PR "This limited edition collection was inspired by the beauty and magic of multi-coloured prisms. Complete with glitter and holographic-like technology. These six icy shades give the appearance of multi-layers of iridescent color. So add this incredible illusion of color to your line up today"

The PR pics and bottle shots are all very tantalising but they are never true to life are they, so what do they really look like?  So far I think they look totally gorgeous, they are like China Glaze said "hey we have a whole vat of fairy dust and a free afternoon, lets mess around".  They have very fine micro holo glitter, just like China Glaze Fairy Dust, mixed in with some other colours of micro glitter, and some larger multicoloured round glitter pieces.  So, lots of glitter then!  Do I love glitter, oh yes, yes I do!

Want to know a secret?  I was a little disappointed when I first opened them, I thought, "oh, pretty glitters but do they deserve the word 'prismatic'?", they were not quite what I had imagined.  But after looking at them closer, I am changing my mind.  They do have the appearance of multi layers so the PR blurb was right there, but the more I look at them, the more I notice.  Things like they aren't holo polishes, but they do have some lovely holo glitter in there but it is more subtle than I had anticipated.  A nice touch is that they have a subtle colour shift that I wasn't expecting, which combined with the holo glitter does justify the 'prismatic' part of the name after all.

So without further waffle, because you will all probably skim the words and go straight to the swatches (which is fair enough in this case!) here they are.

First up, Ray-Diant - Gold/Pale Green
Micro holo, mint green and gold glitter, with larger round blue, silver, orange, and pink glitter.

This one seems to shift from green to gold depending on the light.

Prism - Pale Purple
Micro holo and purple glitter, with larger round blue, silver, orange, and pink glitter.

Love it, well it is purple!  The colour shift isn't as evident in this one, I think purple is a predominant 'shift' colour.  Since this is purple already, then theres no real discernible change.  Still very pretty though.

Full Spectrum - Pale Pink

Micro holo and baby pink glitter, with larger round blue, silver, orange, and pink glitter.

This shifts subtly from pink to purple.  Very pretty girly colour, not sure if its really 'me' though, I don't tend to do baby pink things!  Perhaps because its a pastel shade I will probably still wear it though.

Optical Illusion - Teal 

Micro holo, and teal glitter, with larger round blue, silver, orange, and pink glitter.

Please excuse that there are only three fingers, but I had a big ding missing from my pinky and didn't realise until I came to look at the pics, and its night time now so too late to re-swatch!  Its a shame because this is one of the stars of the collection, lovely teal which changes to gold and purple, and is one of those polishes you end up walking into walls whilst wearing because you can't stop looking at your nails.

Polarised - Silver 

Micro holo, and silver glitter, with larger round blue, silver, orange, and pink glitter.

This is really blingy and sparkly, but it is the least imaginative of the collection.  It is basically, well, silver.  Don't get me wrong, it is a good silver polish and I like silvers so this will definitely be happily adorning my fingers again.

Liquid Crystal - Blue

Micro holo, and blue glitter, with larger round blue, silver, orange, and pink glitter.

The other star of this collection, and the one I ended up wearing as a full mani after my messy swatch-athon (I swear there is glitter everywhere now!).  This changes from an ice blue to mid blurple to purple, love it!

So there we have it, the whole collection for your viewing pleasure.  Please forgive the slowly degrading polish clean ups, but it was getting harder and harder to shift all the glitter in between swatches, and of course my poor cuticles look the worse for wear in the end too!

All these pics are 3 coats, the polishes all covered well and the formula was easy to work with.  They did dry gritty and a little matte, and all of the swatch pics were taken without top coat in weak but direct sunshine.  These were quite hungry when it did come to adding a top coat, but not the worst I have seen.  A generous dollop or two of topcoat evened my final mani out nicely and they are now shiny happy nails.

Just out of interest, I was asked would they make a good layering polish over a dark colour especially, so I took a quick snap of Optical Illusion over a Butter London Dark Knight dupe, I think the answer would have to be a yes, don't you!

So what do you think?  Love them, hate them, disappointed or excited, leave a comment and let me know :)