China Glaze Atlantis was released in 2009 as part of their massive 50 piece Specialty collection of glitter polishes and almost immediately became a legend in its own time. I've never seen a polish with this many reviews online! Well there's a reason for that.
It's drop-dead gorgeous, a true glitter polish with a vivid saturated medium tealy blue-green tinted jelly base packed with teal holographic glitters. On the nail it's a vision of caribbean oceanic splendor. You can almost hear Harry Belafonte... day-o, day-ay-ay-o. The holo glitters sparkle like crazy with rainbow colors that look fantastic with the beautiful tropical blue green color of the base. This is one impressive, irresistible polish, and I thank my generous blogfriend Thithi of ::pretty::tough::nails::, for gifting me with this delicious piece of eye-candy!
Atlantis is a full-coverage glitter. It takes about three coats for maximum richness of color and full opacity. I used two coats over a double layer of Butter London Nail Foundation, an excellent nude tinted basecoat. The Nail Foundation allowed me to use one coat less of my new pretty and still have beautiful coverage without visible nail lines.
I added a couple of squirts of polish thinner to Atlantis before applying it for more control over the glitter spread and to prevent the stickiness common to fast drying glitter jellies that might pull patches in the Nail Foundation. It worked out pretty well!
Photos show two coast of Atlantis over Seche Rebuild treatment and two coats of Butter London Nail Foundation basecoat with a topcoat of Seche Vite. Atlantis dries naturally in good time to a textured finish, and topcoat helps to smooth the surface, boost the color and make for maximum sparkle power as well as adding a glossy glitter-under-glass look.
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| China Glaze Atlantis |
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How 'bout them apples? It's tempting just to dwell and swoon on the awesome blingy prismatic display of the holo glitters, but once you take that in and look at the whole Atlantis is a very sweet-natured happy polish with a beachy tropical air and a sunny disposition. It's personable bling!
To pair with the Atlantis swatches I chose China Glaze Exotic Encounters. Exotic Encounters was released as part of the On Safari collection for fall 2012. It's a well-pigmented medium soft teal green creme with a lovely duskiness to it that adds to its appeal. The color is slightly greener than the teal of Atlantis, more of a green with blue undertones whereas Atlantis feels like more of a blue with green undertones. But they share a certain soul-friendliness that I find intrinsic to the nature of blue-green colors.
Considering the pigmentation and coverage, application of Exotic Encounters should be an easy matter. Unless you're me, and still haven't gotten the hang of applying overly fluid polishes. I just can't seem to get the right amount of polish on the brush! Either it's a little less than what I need and I have to double dip or there's a sudden flood of polish on my nail. The latter provokes a bit of panic on my part and before I know it I've got polish everywhere. If I swipe a cuticle it prompts running and pooling. In spite of all this, because I know my technique is partly to blame and because I've seen plenty of reviews to the contrary, Exotic Encounters does self-level beautifully and doesn't ghost around the edges like many thinner cremes I've experienced. So there you go. This polish dries naturally in good time to a beautiful glossy finish.
Photos show two coats of Exotic Encounters over treatment and base coat with a topcoat of Seche Vite.
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| China Glaze Exotic Encounters |
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Nice! This color reminds me of a soft old chamois shirt from L.L. Bean that I was thrilled to find at the PTA Thrift Shop for $2.50. I wore it during the fall as a jacket (sssh, don't tell Stacy and Clinton) for years until I just about wore it out. Such a comforting shirt! I loved that shirt! So anyway I have that association going with this polish because it's the same color. This is a comfort polish for me.
Maybe you're thinking that now I should try layering Atlantis over Exotic Encounters. What a great idea, they look like they go really nicely together! But it will have to wait, because I'm all pictured out at the moment. And I bet you are too.
love,
Aunt Liz
Egads, I love these both so much!! I want to collect all the sparkly goodness of Atlantis and hug it! EE is one of my all time favorite colors too. Yum!
ReplyDeleteThe problem I had with both of these was that the minute I took them off all I wanted to do was put them right back on!!
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