China Glaze Prismatic Chroma Glitters Collection Spring 2012 Swatches and Review

The China Glaze Prismatic collection is really something special. I've seen a lot of polish in my lifetime. Lots of glitters and lots of duochromes especially, as those are my favorite types of polish to wear. But these? I've never seen anything like these. They're duochrome glitters. Not the type of duochrome glitter where each piece of glitter changes colors (like the Ozotic Elytra line or the Kleancolor Chunky Holo line or your average opal-style glitter), but rather a glitter polish that shifts colors across the entire polish at once. The duochrome effect isn't extremely strong, but it's still visible and extremely pretty. I've tried to capture the color shifts the best that I can, but I think these really need to be seen in person to be truly appreciated.

Full Spectrum - Liquid Crystal - Optical Illusion - Polarized - Prism - Ray-diant

China Glaze Full Spectrum. China Glaze's description: Baby pink bursts into holographic magenta to party with silver, gold, blue, pink and green particles. I don't know about holographic, but the rest is pretty spot-on. There's a lot of different kinds of glitter in these. Super-micro glitter, microglitter, silver, round multicolor, hexagon multicolor, and probably a lot more things that I can't pin down because there's so much going on. This one starts out as a purple shade but then shifts to pink and silvery light lavender with hints of gold.



China Glaze Liquid Crystal. Bright blue holographic with purple tint dusted with silver, gold, green, pink and orange. Again, I don't really notice much holographic glitter in here, if any at all, but there's a ton of different things in it. Liquid Crystal starts out as mostly blue with purple at the edges, but then flashes to purple and pink with a little teal somewhere in the middle.



China Glaze Optical Illusion. Aqua green glimmers with a hint of purple filled with pink, yellow, silver, orange and green flecks. The aqua color of this is very pretty as it is, but then it flashes to blue with purple highlights and it's just... wow. Makes me think of mermaids!



China Glaze Polarized. Silver metallic sheen sprinkled with yellow, pink, orange and green glitters. Maybe it's just my eyes, but I don't see any duochrome shift in this one. It's still a big mix of different colors and textures of glitter, but it stays looking silver all the time.



China Glaze Prism. Grape purple holographic gleams with pink shimmer and glitters with pieces of pink, blue, green, orange, silver and gold. This is one of the more dramatic looking ones. It starts off as a lighter shade of blue and shifts to purple, dusty slate-like blue and little flashes of reddish pink.



China Glaze Ray-diant. Greenish-gold shimmer filled with specks of silver, pink, green, orange and blue. This one starts off as a light green and then fades into lighter, more golden green with pure gold in the center.


Please click this to view more detail. The duochrome effect in the bottles is very strong, but a lot more subtle on the nail. On the nail it's more of a color change type of duochrome, where at one angle it's one color and at another angle it's a different color, rather than a two-colors-at-once type of duochrome.

The formula on these was great. Despite being packed to the brim with multiple types of glitter, they weren't thick and clumpy like I expected. They were thin for glitter polish and flowed surprisingly smoothly onto the nail. I waited a minute or so in between coats just to play it safe and prevent clumping, but I really had no problem with application. They're sheer enough to layer over another polish at one coat but provide complete coverage at three. I am wearing three coats of each color plus one coat of Gelous as topcoat in these pictures. These really need topcoat to look good, and they do absorb topcoat as they dry, so a coat of Gelous (or other thick, clear polish or non-quick dry topcoat) before your topcoat is the best way to go. Dry time was fast.

I'm mesmerized by these. They're so pretty and twinkly and ethereal looking and that little bit of duochrome effect makes them look extra magical. Like I said above, I've never seen anything like these, not counting that Wet n Wild collection that just came out (those seem to be dupes of these, but I haven't swatched them yet to be sure). The duochrome effect could be stronger, and Polarized doesn't seem to have any duochrome at all, but it's really rare to see a truly unique polish these days and overall I'm impressed by them. The easy application, quick dry time and magical effect of these polishes makes them a winner in my book. Very, very cool.

The China Glaze Prismatic Chroma Glitters collection officially releases in April, but is already available at a few places online.

(This was sent for review.)