China Glaze Swatches - Kalahari Kiss, Desert Sun and I'm Not Lion

Hi again :-)

This post came about because I was having a Twitter conversation with the lovely Catrine @unnakednails (hi hun!) about, what else, but nail polish.  (If you want to catch up with me on Twitter I'm @maspooase , always happy to have a nail polish chat!)  I was saying that I loved the look of Kalahari Kiss.  Now for some reason, I don't know why, I'd never thought to actually try to buy any China Glaze, in my mind it was just a brand that would be available in America, but because we were talking about it, I got on my trusty Amazon UK app, and amazingly it was available! It looks like they sell for roughly £6 each, but I plumped for a set which contained, in my opinion, the best 4 polishes.  'Heres the LINK to the one I got' which cost me £19.99 including P&P.
And here's a pic:

Please tell me if my images look OK, as I've found a program to resize them to 800 pixels so I don't have to pay extra for Picasa storage.  If they're no good this size, I'll just bite the bullet and pay it, but if I don't have to, then I won't, more money for polish that way!

So the first one I swatched was the one I wanted most of all, Kalahari Kiss:

The first thing that struck me was the smell, it's quite strong!  Not as bad as Seche, but still pretty potent.  The first coat was streaky, but opaque.  Consistency wise, it's runnier than something like Nails Inc, it reminded me a bit of Revlon Top Speed.  I had to make sure I cleaned the stalk off to make sure I didn't get blobs of blobbiness making its way onto my manicure. 

 

The brush wasn't one of the wide type, and it did have almost exactly the right amount of flex to it, I liked it.  Drying time was quite fast.  This is 2 coats with no top coat.  I really liked this polish, not sure it's quite right for my skin tone, but I think we'll see it around alot as a base for nail art as it's a nice 'almost' neutral.  It's just ever so slightly less yellow than it shows in this picture, in real life it reminds me very much of the colour of fudge, or a pale Werther lol.

 

The next one I swatched was Desert Sun:

The coverage on this one was a little more sheer, but still the same kind of consistency.  I found it OK to apply, although I did have a little bit of trouble getting it completely neat around my cuticles, as you can probably tell!  This one does have a lovely shine to it.  This is two thick coats, probably the equivalent of 3 thin ones (as I was a bit impatient), with no top coat.  Another lovely wearable shade, just slightly more toffee coloured than this in real life.

 

Next up I tried, I'm not Lion:

A fine gold & holo glitter combo in a clear base.  Under my craft light its a festival of awesomeness, but I couldn't get my camera to catch it.  Its very fast drying, this is two coats and they were dry in a flash. 

 

I also layered it over Kalahari Kiss which came out quite well.  Even without a topcoat it was quite smooth, and wasn't too hard to remove, always a bonus for a glitter!:

And last but not least, I had I Herd That to swatch.  I opened the bottle and.......

Oh nooooooo!  Where's the brush?!  It hadn't fallen off into the bottle, it just wasn't there, so no swatches of that one today.  I emailed the seller, who replied within the hour to say that they've dispatched me a new set with a pre-paid label to send the old set back, which is great service.  It's a bank holiday now, so I won't get it for a while, but when I do I'll swatch it and put it on the blog. 

 

So even though I'm sad about getting a dud, I was very happy with the customer service I got.  To be fair, without opening every bottle, you would never know if that was going to happen because you couldn't tell from the outside.

 

So to put the balance straight, and because I always do it, here's a picture of the brush.  Its interesting to note that even though the lids look quite rounded they still stand up by themselves:

And finally, because the colour inspired me, I decided to do some safari-esque nail art over Kalahari Kiss:

And there we have it, my first ever China Glazes, and I'm very happy with them.  They may be my first, but they won't be my last!  Do you have any CG colours you'd recommend to me?  

 

Until next time.....

 

MASPOOASE x x x

~Wendy~