China Glaze On Safari Collection Fall 2012 Swatches and Review

All right! First fall collection of the year! This one's from China Glaze and it's called On Safari.



China Glaze Adventure Red-y. A medium-borderline-dark blue-toned red creme. The color itself doesn't look unique, but, as far as reds go, this is one of the densest and most opaque ones I've ever used.


China Glaze Call of the Wild. Very dark burgundy-brown creme. Pretty straightforward.



China Glaze Desert Sun. China Glaze calls this one caramel, but I think it's a little too orange to be caramel. It looks to me like a light dirty orange with pink undertones. It's very strange but very cool. It dries darker than bottle color.



China Glaze Elephant Walk. A shape shifter. In some lights it looks like a cool-toned grey, while in others it looks completely green. China Glaze describes it as cool graphite grey, but I see a strong green/teal tone in it when I wear it. It has a little bit of extremely fine silver shimmer in it, but not enough to make it look frosty.


China Glaze Exotic Encounters. This is a medium teal creme. The finish is slightly dusty, not crisp and clean.


China Glaze I Herd That. This is a mixture of a few different colors of glitter, all the same size. I see mostly gold and copper but there's also a bit of holographic glitter in here as well. It's warm and sparkly and absolutely perfect. Here I'm wearing it with topcoat, but this color actually dries to a matte finish. It looks just as amazing with its natural finish; the glitter still sparkles but it looks grainy, like your nails are coated in golden sugar.

China Glaze I Herd That, no topcoat.

China Glaze I'm Not Lion. Another excellent glitter. This one shifts colors depending on how I look at it. Sometimes it looks like a light gold with a slight green tinge, sometimes it looks like light taupe with champagne and silver accents. When I look closely I can see light neutral gold glitter, silver glitter and hologram glitter, but the way they combine looks very interesting. This one seems to have more holo than I Herd That does.


China Glaze Jungle Queen. A very dusty-looking greyed-out purple with bright pink and purple shimmer. This reminds me a lot of Chanel Paradoxal. This color looks very hazy and smoky, like there's a grey film spread across the surface. But then, when you catch the light just right, you can see this bright purple flash of shimmer break through the smoky base. Very cool color.


China Glaze Kalahari Kiss. Another strange one! Is this going to be this year's Classic Camel? China Glaze calls it a light sand brown, but again, I disagree. This looks yellow to me. Sandy, dirty, a little bit beige-y, but definitely yellow more than brown.


China Glaze Man Hunt. Bright blue creme. More opaque and a bit darker than Ride the Waves.


China Glaze Prey Tell. Dark, vampy brown-tinged red. Kinda looks like dried blood.


China Glaze Purr-fect Plum. Dark berry-purple. Dries darker than bottle color.

The formula on these was good. They were thicker than I'd normally prefer, but they were also more opaque than usual. Most colors were completely opaque in one coat, only the glitters needed two. The darker shades like Call of the Wild and Prey Tell were the thickest and were harder to apply than the lighter shades. Since these are so thick, they're susceptible to bubbling unless you let each coat dry for 2-5 minutes before applying the next one. Dry time is about average.

For once I'm not really excited about the vampy colors in a fall collection. The ones in here aren't bad, but they're not unique. I have a feeling we'll see a lot of the same ones this fall, just as we've seen them every fall. I love the rest of the colors, though, especially the glitters. Very funky and interesting collection!

The China Glaze On Safari collection will be available starting in July.

(This was sent for review.)