China Glaze On Safari Collection (11/12)

Hi everyone!

Today I have another new collection to show y'all... I've been stalking my local beauty supply store for the China Glaze On Safari collection. I'm fairly certain this is the fall collection, but I remember someone mentioned it as the second summer collection... It is supposed to be released this month (June) so I guess that is early for a fall collection. Oh well. Who cares? :P I got 11 out of the 12 polishes available (I skipped on Call of the Wild - see the section of Prey Tell for details... basically I thought they were too similar to both deserve a home in my stash so I decided not to get Call of the Wild).

This is another long (picture heavy) post, so to see the swatches please click read more!

 


Sorry about the swatches today, I got back rather late and the sun had set about halfway through my swatchathon. I won't have access to my camera tomorrow and the weekend, so I just decided to get all of the swatches done today. I've tried to keep the pictures colour accurate for the most part, but please excuse the weird shades the rest of my hand seems to take.

Onto the pictures!

Adventure Red-y: This red is a bit darker than shown in the picture - it isn't as cherry red, more a blood red (so with a slight tinge of brown). Hopefully that will make sense. Formula on this was great. 2 easy coats were used for opacity.

Elephant Walk: This one actually isn't a creme like most of the others, it has this subtle silvery shimmer in it that reminds me of Sea Spray or even Pelican Grey. I'm not sure how this one would compare to Pelican Grey... but it might be similar. I'm going to need to ask my sister to bring in her bottle so I can make a comparison.

Exotic Encounters:  I crazy love this one. LOVE. It's a teal that leans green... I love it. I can't really explain what the colour is like on this one... you really need to see it. I haven't looked, but I don't think I have anything like this one in my stash.

Jungle Queen: This is a dusty mauve with subtle pink shimmer. This shimmer in this reminds me of the pink shimmer in Cult Nails' Cruisin' Nude. This one reminds me of Chanel Paradoxical and it's millions of dupes, but I'll attempt to report more on that later in a comparison post. Other than the potential dupe-y-ness of this polish... I think it's rather lovely. 

Kalahari Kiss: I actually like the name of this. It sounds so foreign and exotic (methinks it's the Kalahari part ;) ). I like the colour too. This one reminds me of a light and creamy dijon mustard. 

I'm Not Lion: Pretty silvery-gold holographic glitter. In this picture I have two coats of I'm Not Lion over Kalahari Kiss. These two seem to go perfectly with each other. I would definitely like to do a mani with Kalahari Kiss and I'm Not Lion as an accent nail. Very pretty and sparkly. My pictures don't do this one justice.

Desert Sun: Sorry about the pasty fingers on this one. The colour on this is fairy accurate though (on my monitor). I would describe this one as an apricot colour with a bit of smoke-y dustiness. I actually really like this one. Formula was good, 2 nice coats were used for opacity!

I Herd That: My favourite polish in this collection, with Exotic Encounters following behind. This one is similar to I'm Not Lion, but also has sparkly orange glitter in it. I think the orange glitter gives this polish more depth than I'm Not Lion. I approve. This is 2 coats over Desert Sun.

Man Hunt: This polish is a slighty dusty-ish navy blue. It's a bit darker than the picture shows, and dustier. In the bottle this one reminds me of First Mate from the Anchors Away collection. Hmm. This is another one I'll compare and talk more about later.

 Prey Tell: This is a super vampy, dark mahogany-red colour. I found this one similar to Call of the Wild, only Call of the Wild had a different base colour. I think the two would look different depending on how many layers you do, but when I looked at the nail wheel swatches in the store, they looked really similar. My least favourite colour in this collection, probably because it's vampy and I don't really wear vampy polishes (at the very least, not in the summertime - I might consider pulling it out in the fall, but we'll see.)

Purr-fect Plum: This is a berry-plum colour. Actually I think plum describes this one pretty well. I can see myself wearing this one in the summer. This reminds me of blackberry juice. Mmm.


Overall: I liked this collection. This collection makes sense to me as being a fall collection - the colours aren't too bright and are kind of muted and smoky looking, which is something I associate with fall. All of the creme/shimmers in this collection have that same smokiness that I think brings a level of cohesiveness to the collection on a whole. I think the glitters are a nice way to bring some bling into the collection as well, and they aren't too over the top at all and fit in with the mood of the collection. Formula-wise, these were all very good... I had no problems with them at all and I generally used 2 coats for each polish here (with the exception of the glitters). The glitters probably could be worn alone in approximately 3-4 coats, but Kalahari Kiss and Desert Sun are perfect underwear for them. You could possibly wear the glitters over other colours in this collection, but I haven't personally tried this myself. I think the glitter is fairly dense, but you could probably layer it using very thin layers of glitter. As per usual, the glitters do dry with a rough texture, so I would suggest using top coat of smoothen it out on the nail.

*whew*. That was a lot of talking! I'm planning a comparison post later (probably sometime next week), so if you guys have any ideas on similar polishes, please leave a comment and I'll try my best to get a comparison done! Thank y'all for reading!

Marisa