Hi everybody. Today I have a rather picture heavy blog post. This collection has 12 polishes in it which I decided to include in one blog post rather than dividing it up.

So this is the first of the Spring/Summer collections I am swatching and I am certainly not ready to give up my dark colours just yet.  I am not a big fan of pastels or neons as you can probably tell by my nail art on Instagram, I most definitely prefer dark colours.

Pastels and neons make most skin tones look tanned so they are an instant way to make your hands look like they have been on holiday lol. I’m not too keen on the fact they totally change the way my skin looks and I think people with medium/olive skin tones have to be careful with some lighter colours, because in my opinion they do nothing for our skin tone.

Anyway back to the review.  I got these polishes in 2 sets which China Glaze have named Road Trip Ready and Destination Unknown. They are available in these sets from Nail Polish Direct (UK) and HB Beauty Bar (US/International), and are also available individually.

Sorry for the crappy bottle shot, I was so tired after swatching 12 polishes and doing nail art all in the space of about 4 hrs that my product shots were lacking 😦

Ok so lets start with the Road Trip Ready set.  It contains 3 pastel shimmer polishes and 3 what I would describe as sheer creme polishes.

As mentioned previously I am not a big fan of Pastel polishes mainly because they do nothing for my skin tone but make it look excessively dark.  But these 3 shimmer pastels are pretty.  However I was not overly impressed with the formula.

The first polish is called Pack Lightly which is a pretty pinkish coral pastel.  It has a warm gold shimmer which I found hard to capture.  This is three coats, and not thin ones either.  I have seen other reviews that talk about how good the formula is but I was not impressed.  Shimmer polishes can be hard to get right in 2 coats due to streaks, but recently I have swatched and reviewed a few shimmer polishes from other brands and they have been perfect in 2 coats, so I was not keen on the three coats and I certainly could not take pics of this collection without a top coat, as I have done with others recently.

I really like the second polish in the Road Trip ready half even though it is a pastel 😉 That is possibly because it is blue.  I absolutely love this dusty baby blue colour which also has a warm gold shimmer to it (I really need to invest in a better lens to capture shimmer better).  Again I was not overly impressed with the formula as it was a three coater and pretty streaky with just 2 coats.

Next up is Wanderlust, I actually really like the name of this polish, not sure why lol.  As you can see it is a pretty lilac polish with a warm gold shimmer.  Again 3 coats and streaky with just 2.

So moving on to what I would classify as Sheer Cremes, if there is such a thing…

Isn’t this a pretty pink.  I really do like it but again like the others this was a three coat formula, I’m not sure if the reason I was so frustrated at the fact most of this collection was a three coater, was due to the extra time it took me as compared to swatching other polishes, but I was not happy with it.

This is such a pretty blue colour, although this is not quite colour accurate, not sure why but my camera was having issues picking up true colour of the blue toned polishes in this collection.  I have never had any issues with that recently so I figured someone may have been playing with the settings on my camera.  For a more colour accurate pics of this polish go check out The Nail Polish Challenge and her amazing swatches of this collection.  You will also get to see just how much better this collection looks on a lighter skin tone.

Last in the Road Trip ready half of the collection is this lovely red called I Break for Colour.  And woo hoo this was a 2 coater.  This is a perfect red for any occasion and I always like adding a good red to my collection of polishes.

The next half of the collection is called Destination unknown. This half contains 1 shimmer polish and 1 Sheer creme and the rest are like a jelly polish, again quite sheer. I most definitely prefer this half of the collection as it contains some lovely colours for summer.

Lets start with this pretty peach coral colour.  Im not usually a fan of corals, but I will make an exception for this colour.  It really is pretty, even if it was 3 coats 😉

Gahhhhh just look at that colour it’s very different.  At first I was not keen and thought it looked like boogies lol. But I actually quite like this very original lime green and would rock this in summer.  It was a 2 coater too so that made me happy.

The next 2 colours I just could not seem to capture accurately so go check out The Nail Polish Challenge for more accurate colour representation of the next 2 colours.

This colour is one of the more Jelly like polishes in the collection and if you have long nails could actually be a 4 coater to get opaque. It is darker in person, and I just could not capture the it’s true colour.  But it is a lovely colour.

This is such a beautiful colour in person, and again is darker.  Such a stunning colour for Summer.

Another one of my faves from this collection is this warm gold shimmer Yellow.  It is delightful and I love it sooooo much.  It was a 3 coat formula, but I didn’t care so much as it was such a lovely yellow colour.

Last but certainly not least is another 2 coater polish from the collection.  It is a beautiful tomato red like colour with a tinge of orange.  Another fab red to add to my collection of reds.

Overall I have mixed feelings about this collection.  It certainly is a pretty set of colours, but some of them most definitely suit lighter skin tones better.  The fact a majority of this collection is a 3 coat collection was not great, but hey there are many different polish finishes around these days and this collection show cases a few of them including shimmers, Jellys and cremes.

So I hope you liked the 12 swatches and of course I could not leave this collection alone without doing some nail art.

Please excuse the excessively dry cuticles, as well as suffering due to the cold weather swatching 12 polishes in 4 hrs didn’t help ha ha.  So this is what I would classify as my first successful water marble nails….that could be debated however lol.  This is only the second time I have ever tried water marble nails and thought I should try it again after my 1st rather poor attempt, and because the polishes are quite thin I thought they would be good.  I used 2 colours from the collection – Pinking out the Window and I brake for colour.

Thanks for reading.  I will be back with more spring collections soon xxx