Review: China Glaze Cirque Du Soleil Collection, Part 2

Hello!!!

Today is the second part of my China Glaze Cirque Du Soleil collection review. If you missed the first part, you can find it by clicking here.

Same with the first half, I have been at the mercy of the weather right now, so I don't have direct sunlight pictures for all of these. :(

First up for today is Bend Over Backwards. This is a red-orange metallicy-shimmer, and is one of my very favorite polishes in the collection; in fact, it might be my number one favorite. At first glance, you might think it looks like Orly's recently released Flicker, but Flicker is much more orange, while this one is more red. They do have the same finish, however.  (I'd be happy to do a comparison post if anyone would like to see it). This polish has that glowing-from-within-look and it applies like a dream. This is two coats plus one coat of Seche Vite:

China Glaze Bend Over Backwards

China Glaze Bend Over Backwards

What can I say, I just adore every aspect of this polish, and can't wait to play more with it. :)

Next up is Def Defying, another one from the collection that I really like. Def Defying is an avocado green crelly of the best sort. It's jelly enough that you can do cool layering things with it, but creme enough that it goes opaque in a reasonable amount of coats and doesn't make me want to rip off my own face when trying to apply it. It did take three coats to become fully opaque, which I normally don't like, but I'm happy to make an exception for this pretty color:

China Glaze Def Defying

China Glaze Def Defying

I have a glitter sandwich that I'm looking forward to trying with this...In the meantime, I tried it topped with Get Carried Away, one of the glitters from the collection that I showed you in the last post:

Get Carried Away over Def Defying

I like this polish much better over this than over Creative Fantasy (maybe I'm just biased against that polish, lol!). This is one quick coat over the base polish, without topcoat. I did have to play around a bit with it to get the number of rose glitters I wanted, so it wasn't a completely hassle-free application. And if I'd spent a bit more time, I could have made it look a bit less messy. But I wanted you to see what it looks like with just a basic application. :)

Next up: Igniting Love, another one I really like. I have nothing like this in my collection, and I've very excited to have it. It's a red-orange crelly, which leans a bit more toward the jelly side than Def Defying does, in terms of final look. After Creative Fantasy, I was worried that I was going to be thrown by the application here. Absolutely not. This polish applied like a dream and looks great in two coats:

Igniting Love

Igniting Love

Igniting Love

This is a polish I might have overlooked in the past, but once I put it on--in love. :)

And for our next polish...Running In Circles. This is a glass-flecked finish grass green polish with yellow flash to it, and since I love green polishes and glass-flecked finishes, I love this. At first glance it might look like Zoya Logan, but this is a bit lighter and more springy:

China Glaze Running In Circles

China Glaze Running In Circles in the sun

This is two coats with a cover of Seche Vite, but as you see in the sun picture, I really should have used three coats to get full opacity in all lights. Still worth having, but unfortunate, in my opinion.

And last but certainly not least, there is the final glitter of the group, Water You Waiting For. This one is definitely a glitter bomb--if Dorothy's ruby slippers had been blue, this is what they would have looked like. There is actually purple and green glitters in this too, and the blend really does give a nice effect. But if you're not into glitter bombs, this probably won't be for you:

China Glaze Water You Waiting For

Side shot to see the glitter blend

This is two coats with one coat of SV. You may notice a little chipping on one of my nails. This really isn't the fault of the polish--I made an early Thanksgiving dinner this weekend, and subjected this manicure to the worse possible conditions. It's actually quite a tribute there was any polish left at all after all I put it through, lol.

Since I can't see myself wearing this as a full manicure too often, I wanted to see what it looked like as an accent nail. So here is one coat over Hanging In the Balance:

Water You Waiting For over Hanging In The Balance

...And again in the sun.

This is much more my style, and is still really pretty. :)

Overall, I love the colors, glitters and finishes in this collection. I was disappointed a bit that it took three coats for opacity with most colors--I'm spoiled with China Glaze and used to only having to do two coats, sometimes only one. This may have been intentional on their part to make this collection a little more layering-friendly; that certainly would make sense given the glitters. And, it's really not the end of the world. :)

This collection is on sale now; I found mine at www.transdesign.com.

Hope you saw something you liked!

Xoxox,
M.

(The polishes in this review were purchased with my own money.)