Review: China Glaze Magnetix II Collection

Hello!!

My China Glaze Magnetix II Collection arrived today, so I'm finally able to post a review and some skittle swatches for you. Especially because of the top-coat trick I just learned about magnetic polishes, I was really excited to get this collection, so I can play play PLAY!!

I'm going to start with pictures of the bottles and the magnet, then go through the collection color by color. I'll finish up with a comparison of the final color to one from the earlier collection. 

Here are the colors in the bottle:

Bond-Tastic and Sparks Will Fly

Con-Fused and Gold Fusion

Positively In Love and Get Charged

Magnetix II magnet and package

Okay, here we go with the colors:

Look at how pretty and bright they are!! In both the previous pictures I have the following, all with two coats and no top-coat

Pinkie: Positively In Love with circle magnet
Ring: Con-Fused? with Stripe magnet
Middle: Bond-Tastic with squares magnet
Index: Sparks Will Fly with circle magnet
Thumb: Gold Fusion with squares magnet

And one at a time:

Bond-Tastic in the shade

Bond-Tastic in the sun

Bond-Tastic is a terra cotta, burnt sienna sort of brown. It borders on a dark orange, and is fairly unique--I've been looking for this color even in a non-magnetic polish, so this will do double duty for me. :)

Gold Fusion in the shade

Gold Fusion in the sun

Gold Fusion is a rich, burnished gold. Of all the magnetics I've seen, it gives the most 3D effect when used with the magnet. Another winner.

Con-Fused? in the shade

Con-Fused? in the sun

Con-Fused is an emerald green, perfect for Christmas manicures. The green in the previous collection was an olive, so I'm excited to have this. For some reason, the magnetic effect did not photograph well here, I think because of the curve of my nails. But if you look in the below picture, you can see there is actually quite a nice contrast.

Positively In Love in the shade

Positively In Love in the sun

Positively In Love is a deep magenta wine color. It also worked really well with the magnet, giving a nice sharp contrast. I'm happy to see this, because the dark purple in the last collection had the least color contrast in the collection (at least mine did).

Sparks Will Fly in the shade

Sparks Will Fly in the sun

Sparks Will Fly is a medium-deep blue that almost goes to a cerulean when magneted. The sun picture is a more accurate reflection of what this color looks like in both the shade and sun, for some reason--none of my shade pictures wanted to do it justice.

The final polish in the collection, Get Charged, looked an awful lot like Attraction (from the previous collection) to me, so I wanted to do a comparison for you:

Attraction vs. Get Charged

Attraction vs. Get Charged

In the bottle, these polishes look very similar; Get Charged seems to have a hint of purple-grey to it, but not much. However, once on the nail, you can see a clearer difference, and once you hit it with the magnet, the difference is stark. Attraction pulls a silver-black contrast, with a heavy glitter-fleck feel. Get Charged gives a purple-black contrast, with a more standard shimmer effect. The effect is beautiful, and this is possibly my favorite magnetic polish of all the ones I've seen. So these are definitely not dupes. :)

My thoughts and observations on the collection:

I am very happy with this collection of colors, because these are jewel-tones that are brighter than the last collection (which was much more muted). To my eye, all of the colors are unique enough to justify owning them, even if you own the previous collection--possibly you could skip Positively In Love since the other collection had two somewhat similar polishes, but I personally wouldn't.

If you look at the last picture above, you'll see that the circle image looks a little muddier with Attraction than with Get Charged. I definitely found this to be true of most of the collection--it seems like they reworked the formula a little bit to get sharper contrasts with the colors. This also makes me happy. Bond-Tastic and Gold Fusion seemed to give the least-sharp contrasts, but they were still just as good as the previous collection, and the rest were better. Also, in the few hours I've been wearing them, I've seen less blurring with the newer collection than with Attraction, which is also a welcome improvement.

The formula went on well; you can get away with one coat for most of them, especially if you want to wear the polishes unmagnetized, but I found the magnet worked better when there was two coats applied to the nail.

My only real disappointment with this collection is the magnet. The magnet from the first collection was fairly weak, compared to other brands (for example, Color Club's magnets). I was hoping they would improve that with the second collection. While the magnet does seem to be a little bit better, it's still not as good as other magnets I've used, quite noticeably. That said, I found the circle design worked quite well, better than the other two designs on the magnet. And the better reactivity of the new polishes does help a bit too, but that shouldn't have to matter. I just don't understand what the difficulty is producing a stronger magnet set.

So, there are my thoughts on the collection. Love the polishes, love the magnet shapes, don't love the magnet strength so much. :)

If you would like to see full swatches or see more comparisons with the previous collection, leave me a request and I will try to get it done for you. :)

Thanks for taking a look!

M.

(the products in this review were purchased with my own money.)