China Glaze Infra Red

Ever since I first heard that China Glaze were releasing another set of holographic polishes, entitled the Hologlam Collection, I was dying to try at least one. I love holo as much as the next nail blogger, so when the Hologlam polishes popped up on Nail Polish Direct, I just had to satiate my curiosity. I managed to restrain myself to just the one polish, since the Hologlams are more pricey than the standard China Glaze (£8.95 at nailpolishdirect.com and more at other retailers compared with an average £6ish price tag for a standard China Glaze).

Infra Red is pretty gorgeous – it’s a lovely raspberry-fuchsia shade with some seemingly subtle linear holo to it… the holo is largely invisible in anything other than purest sunlight or bright artificial light, hence some of the weird angles in the following photos. My nails all have one coat of Revlon Quick Dry Topcoat over them:

Unfortunately the polish did look more like the above photo in most lights – although the blue shimmery duochrome effect is very apparent in most lights the holo effect is not so.

I wanted to include the pictures of the polish in its ‘normal’ form because I want you all to know that that is what it will look like on you most of the time. For me that is more than good enough but I know if you are looking for a strong holo effect you will find Infra Red lacking. As you can see, once the light hits it, the holo is apparent and very pretty. I also noticed a strong blue colour in the holo effect, which is something I haven’t really experienced before with holos. I’ve always found them to be ‘pure rainbow’! I can’t get enough of the colour of Infra Red, even without the holo the colour is gorgeous.

Application:

I am sad to say that Infra Red is a bit of an application monster. 🙁 If you own GOSH Holographic, the application is largely similar but more frustrating due to the thinness of the China Glaze brush. If you don’t own GOSH Holographic, I shall explain. First coat goes on fine, but you have to be very careful to use as few strokes as possible and really load up the brush with polish before you start painting. If you brush the polish over the same place more than once it will nearly always drag all the colour off that spot leaving a bald patch. Which harms the level of the polish which is more noticeable with a holo as it breaks up the pattern. Second coat is worse so try really hard to leave as long as you can between coats. Infra Red takes average time to dry – no more and no less than other China Glazes. It dries to quite a flat, satiny finish – quite standard for a holo, so I would really really recommend a topcoat to show off the holo when it appears.

Overall, I think this is the victim of expectation. I think if it hadn’t been billed as a holo, it would have come as a pleasant surprise to us all and maybe the expectation wouldn’t be so high. As it stands, there are so many strong, decent linear holos out there now I think we almost expect them all to meet the ‘brand standard’ of holo. Anyway, what I am trying to say is that I bloody love the colour, and the blue elements, and I am very happy to own this polish. What do you think? Does lack of holo disappoint you? Will you be picking this up?

I also managed to come by China Glaze QT since buying Infra Red so I will be doing a comparison of the two at some point!