China Glaze Tranzitions Color-Changing Nail Lacquer Collection Spring 2013 Swatches and Review

China Glaze's Tranzitions collection is a set of six very interesting polishes.  They're not like ordinary polish.  They're one color when you apply them, but adding a coat of topcoat changes them into a different color.  Hence the name Tranzitions. 

China Glaze recommends their Fast Forward topcoat (which is what I'm using in these swatches), but any topcoat will trigger the color-change effect.

China Glaze Tranzitions in Altered Reality.  This is a frosty, metallic and slightly duochrome medium teal.  The main color is a blue-teal and it flashes a deeper green-teal at the edges. 

China Glaze Tranzitions in Altered Reality with topcoat.  With topcoat, it becomes a darker, more blue type of teal.  This one had the least dramatic color change effect for me. 

China Glaze Tranzitions in Duplicity.  This one's a very pretty light teal-ish turquoise, almost more of a mint green. 

China Glaze Tranzitions in Duplicity with topcoat.  With topcoat it becomes darker and more blue.

China Glaze Tranzitions in Metallic Metamorphosis.  A dark smoky charcoal-silver metallic.  The shimmer particles look a bit rough and it dries nearly matte.  This might be my favorite one pre-topcoat.

China Glaze Tranzitions in Metallic Metamorphosis with topcoat.  With topcoat, it darkens significantly and takes on a blue-green tint.

China Glaze Tranzitions in Modify Me.  A bright periwinkle...

China Glaze Tranzitions in Modify Me with topcoat.  ...becomes bright violet after topcoat.  This is my favorite post-topcoat color.

 China Glaze Tranzitions in Shape Shifter.  This starts out as a frosty, muted navy with purple tones.

China Glaze Tranzitions in Shape Shifter with topcoat.  With topcoat, it becomes a gorgeous dark blue-toned purple shimmer. 

China Glaze Tranzitions in Split Perso-nail-ity.  A medium mauve pink creme.

China Glaze Tranzitions in Split Perso-nail-ity with topcoat.  This is a pretty dramatic change.  It becomes a saturated berry color!

I found the formula on these to be problematic.  The texture reminds me more of acrylic paint than it does of nail polish.  It goes on with a slight drag and has a tendency to leave bald spots and make little lumps if I'm not careful.  Three coats evens out the color, and that's what I used here.  A little tricky, but manageable.  I found the dry time to be long on all the colors.  But let me tell you about what really bothered me about the formula: applying the topcoat.

These polishes have little speckles of pigment in them (it's visible in a lot of the colors if you look closely), and they bleed when you apply topcoat.  That's what gives them the color change.  However, it doesn't just bleed on the nail.  It bleeds into your topcoat and onto the brush.  I would highly, highly recommend keeping a paper towel handy and wiping the brush before putting it back into your topcoat bottle each time.  You will end up with tinted topcoat if you don't.

The other problem with topcoat application is that it streaks.  If you get the nail wet enough with topcoat, the streaks tend to disappear after a while.  If your coat is too thin and dries too fast, the streaks will stay.

Neither of those will be an issue if you use topcoat strictly for creating designs, which is what the intended use is.  Streaks aren't visible when creating dots, for example, and you won't have tinted topcoat from using a dotting tool. 

So... These are a cool idea, for sure.  Can't recall seeing any other polishes like these.  If you take a thin nail art brush, or a dotting tool, or even a toothpick, you can draw cool designs with topcoat.  The color change isn't as obvious on the darker colors, but it's dramatic on the lighter ones.

If I was better at freehand nail art, I think I'd like these more.  But, my hands are too shaky to have much success with freehand designs, and since I found the formula so strange and the topcoat bleeding problem annoying, I wasn't thrilled by these.  I could use them for an easy funky french, and I tried out some dots which looked cool, but otherwise they're just a novelty for me and I don't see myself wanting to reach for them often.

(This was sent for review.)