China Glaze High Def

Hello! Today I have a holographic polish to show you all 🙂 you probably know by now that I’m not mad on holos, at least not as much as many girls I know, but I do like a nice subtle holo. This one fits the bill perfectly. High Def is quite an oldie – it’s from the Tronica collection, which was out in early 2011… it was a lovely collection *we think* inspired by Tron, which came out around that time. This excites me a lot because I began my blog in January of 2011 and I still remember being wowed by these in the early days 🙂 I didn’t ever buy any of the Tronica collection because at the time I didn’t really realise that I could actually buy polishes from abroad, and I’d only recently stumbled upon the world of blogging and nail polish in general, so I just admired from afar. I actually picked up High Def in a Facebook nail polish sale group, at a very reasonable price. These are bordering on hard to find (HTF) now!

This is a stunningly beautiful periwinkle blue scattered holo. Although saying that, in a lot of lights I found it to be almost linear in appearance. It’s totally totally unique to my collection and such a lovely colour to have a holo, I’m annoyed with myself for not really using it before now.

Application:

The photos show 2 coats with topcoat, and it’s totally opaque. Topcoats can dull a holo sometimes, and while it did a tiny bit with this polish it wasn’t too noticeable. I found this polish applies better without basecoat. Without, it applies smoothly and evenly with barely any pulling of pigment. But with basecoat, if you went over the same spot twice, it tended to pull the pigment with the brush leaving a bald patch. This is fairly common with holos, and many need a particular basecoat (usually with ‘aqua’ in the name!) to help it fix. It dries relatively quickly, so using another coat to cover any bald patches isn’t a problem. I find that if you load up the brush, dab the polish off near the cuticle and then paint from that point, it helps to keep the finish even and avoid dragging.

Application issues is nothing new with holos, and I think compared to a lot of them, this one isn’t too bad. I did find it chipped on one nail within 24hrs and on a second nail the day after, so it’s not one you’ll be able to wear all week.

I couldn’t tell you where to find this polish now, because as I said before, it’s virtually a HTF, but keep your eyes out for it on blogsales and Facebook selling groups as it does pop up from time to time! 🙂