China Glaze Hologlam Collection Comparison Swatches

Hey y'all! Thought I'd do a quick comparison post for the China Glaze Hologlam shades. I know you all want as much info as you can get so I'm here to supply you with that information!

Ever since I got my nail swatch sticks, I've been happily swatching my babies and I think I'm a third through my collection. I've swatched my holos, indies and toppers (that includes flakies and glitters) and I'm not really looking forward to starting on the rest because it's gonna be a long project. Back to the sticks, I think they're a great way to catalogue your collection. I'm trying to sort mine by colours and I love how you can rearrange them so if you buy a new shade of polish that's in between two existing shades you own, it's easy to fit the new one in.

The sticks are also fantastic for doing comparisons since I don't have to reswatch anything so today's post is gonna feature my lovely sticks! Hope you guys don't mind that.  

All the pictures were taken indoors, under my table lamp.

Starting with the corals, we have China Glaze TTYL, China Glaze Digital Dawn, China Glaze TMI, China Glaze Not In This Galaxy, Layla Shock Pink and Layla Red Taboo.



Next, we have the magentas. From left to right, Layla Red Taboo, Layla Purple Illusion and China Glaze Infra-Red.



On to the lilacs, we have Color Club Halo-Graphic, China Glaze Astro-Hot and China Glaze Electric Magenta.



For the lavenders, we have Layla Ultra Violet, Color Club Cloud Nine, China Glaze Get Outta My Space and Color Club Fashion Addict.



Moving on to the dusty purples, we haveChina Glaze When Star Collide, Layla Misty Blush and Layla Cloudy Violet.



For the light blues, we have OPI DS Sapphire, Color Club Blue Heaven, Layla Mermaid Spell, FNUG Fusturistica and China Glaze Sci-Fly By.



Moving on to the medium to darker blues, we have China Glaze 2NITE, China Glaze High Def, China Glaze Strap On Your Moonboots, Into The Night (Franken), China Glaze Take A Trek and Glitter Gal Teal Blue.



As requested by Olivia, here is China Glaze DV8 and Take a Trek. DV8 leans more towards a marine blue whereas Take a Trek has a greyer undertone.



Same two polish, taken at an angle to show their holoness.



For the lighter, almost seafoam greens, we have China Glaze Don't Be A Luna-tic, Color Club Angel Kiss and Layla Jade Groove.



And we mustn' forget the olives that are A-England Princess Sabra and China Glaze OMG A UFO.



For the light greys, we've got Daiso #10, China Glaze Cosmic Dust and Layla Flash Black



And last but not least, we've got the charcoal/black holos that are China Glaze Galactic Gray, Color Club Revvvolution, Glitter Gal 10 to Midnight, Layla Flash Black and Jade Magia Negra.



I tried to include quite a few brands of holos in this comparison, like the China Glaze OMGs, Layla Holograms, Jade Holograficos, Color Club Halo Hues and Glitter Gal holos so you can tell how holo the new China Glaze Hologlams are.

I must admit that the aren't as blingy as the holos I've grown to love (Laylas and Color Clubs) but these new Holograms are quite different in terms of how smooth they look. The holo particles and reall extremely fine and honestly, the closest thing to compare them with will be the original OMGs.

As I've mentioned in my first swatch post of the Hologlams, these new China Glazes do dry a smidgen slower than the OMGs or the Laylas. I would say the dry time is comparable to the Halo Hues.

Let me know if you guys wanna see any other comparisons and If I own the polish, I'd gladly take pictures! Till next time!

Holo Month Day 10: My Fabulous Private Jet (Franken)

I was having a conversation with Susan and Annette on twitter just the other day and we were discussing how I recently bought so many holo polishes and I jokingly said I could do an entire month's worth of posts just on holo goodness. Well, since I already started out with the first eight Layla holograms, I thought why not? If I could have my way, I'd be posting every single day for holo month but since I just started work, you'll have to be contented with say, three posts a week? As I'm typing this, I have my audit notes (which I'm supposed to be studying) on my desk. It's only Day 2 of work and yet it was an eleven hour day for me. And I have three more days of training to go, with a test on Friday and on the weekend, I have some e-learning to do. Whoever said there'd be no more learning and tests after we graduated was CLEARLY LYING.

Oh well. I digress. So, continuing on my holo rampage, today I have a franken to show you.

OPI My Private Jet was my first polish love. I saw it on notebookdoodles (it's such a shame she doesn't update the blog anymore) a long while back and I suspect her's was the holographic brown version. We'll go into all the different versions in a bit but back to the polish, it was love at first sight. 

Now onto the different version, God knows how many they are but so far, I've counted the original holographic, charcoal holographic, brown holographic, teal flash and the latest yucky brown with silver flecks.

Sadly, by the time I fell in love with MPJ, I wasn't lucky enough to get my polished claws on any of the holographic versions and could only get the yucky brown version. But oh no, I WILL NOT SETTLE. And this is where a little spectraflair comes in.

I know that my fabulous franken doesn't exactly glow in this picture but just you wait!



TADAH!

The addition of some spectraflair made the base colour of MPJ a little paler and more grey though but hey, that kinda makes it looks more like the charcoal holo version!

Just a short and sweet post today. Why complicate things with words when pictures can paint a thousands words? ;)

Stay tuned for more holographic awesomeness!

Holo Month Day 4: Layla Ultra Violet (and comparison)

Purple holographic polish. Three words that will always make my heart skip a beat. Seriously, how do you not drool when you see this?

This is three coats of Layla Ultra Violet, taken in artificial lighting.









Love. Love. Love.

I dug around my Helmer a bit for light purple holographic polishes for this comparison and I came to a conclusion that I do not own enough light purple holos.

This is 3 coats of Ultra Violet, 3 coats of DS Original and 2 coats of my SF franken Copy Cat (a play on DS Original, in case you didn't catch that one).





I hunted around for DS Original for the longest time and I was so happy when I finally managed to buy it from Gwen (a fellow Singaporean blogger), who had a spare bottle and was kind enough to sell it to me! DS Original has a more spectraflair finish as compared to the super smooth finish that Ultra Violet has and somehow the holo effect on DS Original appears warmer and brighter. Colour-wise, Ultra Violet is definitely cooler.

As for Copy Cat, I used a finer grade Spectraflair when I was frankening the shade (SF-14) so the particles are smaller and give off a smoother finish. I also added a few drops of China Glaze Millenium to give it a somewhat frosty finish. It actually is pretty holo as can be seen here so you can only imagine how holo Ultra Violet is!

You know what? I'm going to go out on a limp here and say this is my favourite polish out of the eight Laylas I have shown / will be showing you. What can I do? My defenses are so weak when it comes to purple holos.

Stay tuned for Jade Groove though! I may not love it as much as I love Ultra Violet but it's still kickass nonetheless! See you then! :)

Revlon Chic, the MAC Blue India dupe?

As promised earlier on, here is the new MAC Blue India comparison!

I was at Watsons a few weeks back and I was walking down the cosmestics aisle when something caught my eye. It was this gorgeous slate blue Revlon polish and I knew instantly that they brought Revlon Chic in! LIKE FINALLY!

I've been crazy about slate blue polish ever since I saw MAC Blue India, a polish which I had longed for for the longest time but wasn't able to get until I was trolling ebay one fine day last year and since a listing! I HAD TO HAVE IT IMMEDIATELY and Janelle, the kind soul that she is, helped me with the shipping (the seller only shipped within the US). I will be forever grateful to her! :)

So anyway, back to Chic, I grabbed a bottle and proceeded to pay for it, excited at how it'll compare to Blue India and the rest of my slate blue polishes!



Here we have a bottle comparison of, from left to right, my franken Blue My Mind (BMM), Sally Hansen Grey by Grey (GBG), MAC Blue India (BL) and  Revlon Chic (C).



This is one coat of each polish on my nails. Revlon Chic and Blue My Mind were the more opaque of the bunch, and you can immediately see how much greyer and lighter Grey By Grey is compared to the rest.



This was two coats of each polish.



This is Chic on the left, next to Blue India and you can see that they are definitely not dupes!



This is Grey By Grey on the left and Blue India on the right and again, no dupes here.



Lastly, we have Blue India on the left and Blue My Mind on the right. Blue My Mind was the closest to Blue India (and I take pride in knowing that I created the closest dupe of the bunch, even before I bought Blue India!) but they're still not dupes.

Formula wise, Blue India had the runniest formula, and hence was the sheerest of the bunch but it built up nicely with two coats. Revlon Chic was a little thick but still manageable. My bottle of Grey by Grey has grey streaks in it and those streaks translated to grey streaks on the nails. They're not too obvious unless you examine the nail close up but I'm still not happy about it. As for Blue My Mind, it does have a rather thick formula so I'll be adding a couple of drops of thinner to it after I finish typing this.

In conclusion (boy, I feel like I'm writing an essay!), Blue India has proven to be a polish that is undupable. As much as I love being able to find dupes of polishes, I'm actually happy that Blue India has no dupes because it makes the money I spent worth it! :)

-------------
Where to buy:
MAC Blue India: Ebay
Sally Hansen Grey by Grey: Ebay
Revlon Chic: Watsons
Blue My Mind: Sorry ladies, this was a franken but you can get Tony Moly TR11 and add a few drops of black polish.

Dark Holographic Comparison

Yes, I am aware of my holo craze. I do apologize if you're sick of seeing holo posts from me but I still haven't gotten enough of them yet.

Today, I have a comparison of my darker holos. I swatched them on a nail plate because I already had 2 shades painted on previously. As with all holo swatches, please click on the pictures to enlarge them cuz the holo effect will look better! I really wanted to type the names of the polish on the picture itself but my photoshop's a bit cranky today and the text tool is not cooperating with me so I'll just type the names here and I hope you won't get confused!



(L-R) OPI My Private Jet (Holo Version) (which I swatched at BHG despite stares from the OPI lady), my own franken of a holo MPJ, Color Club Revvvolution, TFS BK901 (this one is the charcoal holo, not the OPI Unrippen dupe, because TFS has 2 polishes with the same name) and lastly Glitter Gal Lizard Belly.



Here's a blurry shot so the holo effect is a little more apparent. The others are reversed, from L-R, from the above picture, with Lizard Belly being the first one from the left.

And now it's close-up time!



(L-R) MPJ, Franken, Revvvolution



(Top - bottom) Revvvolution, Franken and MPJ



(L-R) Franken, Revvvolution, BK901 and Lizard Belly



Same order as above.



(L-R) Revvvolution, BK901 and Lizard Belly



(L-R) BK901 and Lizard Belly

Took these last three shots when the sun FINALLY appeared.





Please ignore the blue polish. It was from a previous swatch.



That's what I'm talking about, Lizard Belly!

WOWZA! I'm so happy I did these swatches and here are my mental notes when was doing the swatches and reviewing the pictures:

1) I finally managed to capture some holoness from MPJ! If you have been reading my blog for a while now, you'd know that I came across a magical holo bottle of MPJ at BHG but the sales lady refused to sell it to me so I grew a pair, went back the next day and swatched the damn thing on my nail plate so at least I'd have a momento of it. Because it was rather sheer, the holoness was a bit hard to capture but I was pleasantly surprised when I saw the pictures!

2) Again, I have not captured Revvvolution this holographic before! Just look at the second, fifth and sixth pictures! WOW OH WOW! I always thought I owned a dud version but this dud ain't that bad after all!

3)   I'm not sure if Singapore is already selling BK901 because I got my bottle in Malacca. I paid roughly S$10 for it and there was a pink holo for sale there too. Not really a pink polish kinda girl so I gave it a miss. This polish was the lightest and most grey out of the five but it's holoness is probably the best!

4) Lizard Belly was a little weird. In the process of drying, it started to appear matte and I had to fight the urge to touch it immediately and try to wipe it with a cloth or something. Ultimately, it did dry glossy but I just found the whole thing so weird. And it's so hard to capture the holoness of Lizard Belly! It looks so holo irl but my camera just refuses to let Lizard Belly shine! Maybe it's due to how dark Lizard Belly is? I don't know. Oh, and Lizard Belly is actually a really dark green. It looks black in a lot of swatches but trust me when I say it's definitely green.

5) If you don't own any holographic polishes, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? The world is so much better with rainbows on your nails!

Holographic Frankens

I'm totally loving my spectraflair I ordered from Lori! I swatched them on my nail plate so I could take it out and stare at it whenever the sun comes out and be dazzled. As usual, click on the pictures to enlarge them and make the holoness even better. I promise you it's worth doing so!

This first blue one is Glamazon. I've shown this baby to you twice now I think but since I'm showing you my holo frankens, I felt the need to include it in the post! I used OPI DS Sapphire to make it holo but added some spectraflair to bling it up!









Next, I have a light purple holo called Copy Cat. I've been lusting for OPI DS Original for the longest time so I decided to create my own. Hence the name, Copy Cat!





Oh and when the sun is in it's full glory, POW WOW!



And here's a blurry shot to show how holo Copy Cat is! :D





This next one is a chocolate holo called Chocolate Sprinkles! This was inspired by Glitter Gal Suede. I didn't want to blow $19.90 on a bottle of polish so I decided to make my own. (And yes, that's Copy Cat next to it!) I didn't add as much spectraflair into this franken as compared to Copy Cat but it's still very bling bling! (:













And this last one is a dark purple holo all the way on the left. I've wanted ChG LOL for a while now and since I don't see myself getting it anytime soon, I took it upon myself to franken a similar shade. It's called Wild Thang, inspired by Color Club's Wild at Heart.









I used a coarser grade of SF for this dark purple one as compared to the previous two frankens and as a result, the rainbow effect is a tiny bit brighter, as seen in the picture below.



I LOVE SPECTRAFLAIR! But oh, I have no idea what other holo colours to franken. Any idea?