China Glaze The Hunger Games Capitol Colors Collection Spring 2012 Swatches and Review

The China Glaze Capitol Colors Collection... or is it the Colors from the Capitol collection? My press materials say it both ways. This collection is based on the Hunger Games series and the release is supposed to coincide with the brand new Hunger Games film that's scheduled for March. The names of the polishes has changed since we first saw that leaked image, but the colors are still the same. They are:


China Glaze Agro. An amazing leafy olive green shimmer. It has a semi-foil finish and really impressive depth of color. If you look closely, you can see that the metallic shimmer particles are all different colors. It dries a little darker than it looks in the bottle, but the glowy finish keeps the color looking bright.



China Glaze Dress Me Up. This is an odd one. It's a dusty, dirty warm rose creme. It has a little peach and a little brown in it and the finish is very dense and creamy. It's a rather mature looking color and it doesn't feel like it goes with the rest of the collection.




China Glaze Electrify. A gold and red glitter mix in a clear base. It's like a chunkier, redder cousin to Nicole Glitter in my Stocking. The red and gold look like they're about 1:1 in here. Maybe a *little* more gold. But they look pretty even.



China Glaze Fast Track. A light taupe creme base with flaky gold shimmer. This is a lot like Essence Irreplaceable, and like a lighter, less brown version of China Glaze Ingrid. The gold flecks look amazing in the dusty greyed base.



China Glaze Foie Gras. A dusty purple brown creme. It dries a lot darker than it looks in the bottle, but still retains a bit of the dusty looking finish.



China Glaze Harvest Moon. Wow. I mean... wow. Speechless. This is a super shiny metallic copper shimmer. It's not as dense as a foil but it's not chunky like glitter. The shimmer particles are iridescent and shift colors when they light hits them. You can see little flashes of red and orange and gold in it. I think this is my favorite in the collection, but I could be biased due to the name, because I really love this:




China Glaze Hook and Line. This is a super frosty light grey. The application on this one is not nice and it's extremely streaky and shows every flaw in my nails. Once it dries, the color looks okay... But I really can't say I'm a fan of the brushstroke-ridden frost finish.



China Glaze Luxe and Lush. A chunky mylar flake glitter in a clear base. It's a pastel-opal type duochrome finish. Each flake and chunk is a different shape and size and reflects pink, blue, green and gold. It's similar to Color Club Covered in Diamonds, but a lot smoother, easier to apply and with smaller chunks.



China Glaze Mahogany Magic. This is a warm olive-tinged medium brown creme. I like how creamy and glossy it looks, but there's just something kinda... fecal... about it. It's that yellow undertone and the touch of olive in it. Sorry! Sorry. I know. That's gross. And this is coming from someone who loves colors like OPI And Apple Pie. I don't think I have the right skin tone to pull off this shade of brown. Someone olive toned would probably look great in this.



China Glaze Riveting. Did I already say that Harvest Moon was my favorite? I did. But this one is a close second. It looks like fire. It's a bright, saturated red-orange jelly base with lots of large gold metallic shimmer. It's not quite a flake shape, but not really a glass fleck, either. The shimmer sits nicely in the jelly base and glows like embers. It's amazing. It also reminds me of an old China Glaze I have, but I can't remember the name...



China Glaze Smoke and Ashes. This one has a very dark base. I can't tell if it's pure black, or if it's a nearly-black blue-green shade. It seems to have a blue-green tint to it to my eye, but that might just be coming from all the shimmer. Anyway, Smoke and Ashes is loaded with a blue-green-gold duochrome shimmer. It changes colors depending on the angle. It's very interesting in person, a lot more complex than it looks here. Definitely worth seeing for yourself if you get the chance.



China Glaze Stone Cold. A matte! I wasn't expecting that. It's a dark grey base with large silver shimmer. It looks near-black after it dries. More grey-ish if you use topcoat to make it glossy. Gorgeous application on this one. Very smooth and opaque. And I like the name.

Luxe and Lush is pretty cool all by itself, but I wanted to see how well it layered with other colors, so here's a couple combos I tried:

China Glaze Luxe and Lush (one coat) over China Glaze Riveting.

China Glaze Luxe and Lush (one coat) over China Glaze Stone Cold.

The formula on these was not so good. I found most of these to be very gloopy and runny yet thick at the same time, like early three-free polish formulas used to be. Not all of them were weird; some of them applied perfectly. Stone Cold, Smoke and Ashes and Riveting had perfect formula, not runny or drippy at all. The others felt thick and sort of oily or fluffy feeling. Just be careful to remove all the excess polish from the brush and stem, apply thin coats and wait a couple minutes in between coats and you'll be fine. The colors all have great coverage. I did two coats of each and that's all they needed. I didn't have any bubbling with these and the dry time was only marginally longer than average China Glaze dry time.

I don't really know anything about the Hunger Games trilogy (I haven't read it! Shame!), so I don't know how well these go with the theme of the series, but the colors are nice regardless. Well, most of them. I can't say I like Dress Me Up, Hook and Line or Mahogany Magic, but the rest are great. I love Harvest Moon, Riveting, Agro, Fast Track, Smoke and Ashes and Luxe and Lush. At least there are more cool colors than bland ones. But, I'm sure fans of the series will probably want the entire set anyway, right?

This collection will be available at salons and retail stores like Sally Beauty and Ulta starting in early March.

(This was sent for review.)