China Glaze On Safari 2012 Collection - Swatches and Review!

Hey guys! I know I'm a little late doing this collection, but today I have for you the China Glaze On Safari collection! I will be reviewing all 12 shades. This collection consists of 10 cremes and 2 glitters. I don't think that anyone would like EVERY colour in this collection, but there is definitely something for everybody in here! This post is going to be rather picture heavy, so I'm going to put most of it behind a jump, but here's a little sneak peek!

Ooh, pretty glitter!

Let's get started, shall we? I will do the cremes first and save the two gorgeous glitters for last. In all of these pictures, I am wearing two coats of each colour and no top coat, except for Exotic Encounters, where I am wearing top coat because dumb me smudged the polish before I could take pictures.

Oh, and I apologize for the horrific state of my cuticles, I have been having very bad hand days lately. And no, I am not missing the pinky on my left hand, I just had to cut that nail way way down yesterday because it tore. See? Bad hand days. :(

Without further ado...

Kalahari Kiss is a "light sand brown" creme, according to China Glaze. There is definitely a lot of yellow in this polish too. It reminds me of something you might see in a desert camouflage uniform. Anyway, I always expect the formula for this colour of polish to be a watery, streaky nightmare, but it was so awesome! I was pleasantly surprised to find that this was thick and quite opaque!

Natural indoor light

Desert Sun is a dusky orange creme described as "delicious caramel." It reminds me of butterscotch Lifesavers! The formula for this was nice and flowed easily. This colour was hard to photograph for some reason. My camera wanted to make it ORANGE and leave out the lovely muted dusky quality to it. After some tweaking, this is true to colour.

Natural indoor light

Jungle Queen is a purple shimmer described as "smoky violet" by China Glaze. It has a really pretty purple shimmer which is very visible in the bottle but doesn't really come out to play on the nail unless under bright lights or in the sun. I struggled with formula. The first coat was really watery, drippy, and hard to control. The second coat was a little easier but this definitely isn't the best formula from the collection.

Looks dark in indoor natural light!

This is artificial light. The dusty violet is a lot more apparent and you can even see the shimmer!

Elephant Walk is a "cool graphite grey" shimmer according to China Glaze. I see a grey shimmer with green undertones. Like Jungle Queen, Elephant Walk's shimmer likes to show up in the bottle but hide on the nail. Good formula, not too brush strokey.

Natural light indoors

The shimmer that should be on my nails

Man Hunt is a lovely, vibrant, cobalt blue creme. This beautiful colour is right up my alley, I love it! The formula on this was perfect. Not much else to say!

 Natural light

Direct sunlight. Can't stop staring, so gorgeous!

Exotic Encounters is a "lush green crème with blue undertones." It looks pretty blue in the bottle, but on the nail it does pull green. I love this colour! No staining! I don't have anything like this in my collection, I ended up putting it back on as my manicure!

Natural indoor light

Direct sunlight

Purr-fect Plum is described as a "bold burgundy." Really, CG? You wouldn't describe it as, oh, I don't know, a plum colour? Haha, this is a great PLUM creme with warm tones. I do agree with the bold part! The formula on this was good, it gave me no troubles!

Natural indoor light

Artificial light

Direct sunlight, you can see the nice warm tones here.

Adventure Red-y is a "vivid red" creme. Guys, this stuff applies like a dream. The formula is absolutely perfect. This is two coats but if you were careful it could be a one-coater! This one was hard to photograph for me too for some reason. I had to put this weird blue filter on to make it the right colour!

Indirect sunlight

Prey Tell is "daringly dark red" in CG's eyes, but I see a lot of purple in it too. It's another creme, and a vampy one at that! The formula on this is awesome too. I am still in summer mode but this makes me excited for it to be colder out so I can wear some deep, dark colours!

Natural indoor light. Looks almost black!

Direct sunlight

Call Of The Wild is a "beautiful chocolate brown-dark cherry blend" and I couldn't have said it better myself. The formula on this was a little harder to control for me, but not too bad.

 Natural indoor light

Direct sunlight. The brown is so pretty!

I Herd That is a "brilliant copper glitter." I don't really see copper. This is packed with gold, orange, red, and holographic micro glitter. This is two coats and it's fairly opaque, but you might prefer a third. As with all glitter polishes, this one dries a little gritty, so bust out your top coat to make it smooth!

Natural indoor light

Artificial light. You can see the holo glitter!

Direct sunlight. It looks like it's on fire!

I'm Not Lion is described as a "glistening gold and multi-color glitter," which is fairly accurate. The sister to I Herd That, this polish has some gold and silver micro glitter along with some of that super pretty holographic glitter. This is also two coats ad mostly opaque. Again, you might prefer a third. And, again, this dries gritty so keep your top coat handy. :)

Natural indoor light

Artificial light. Look at that yummy holo glitter!

Direct sunlight

All in all, I really really like this collection. There were a couple of colours that I was skeptical about just seeing them in the bottle (I'm looking at you, Kalahari Kiss), but I can honestly see myself wearing every single one of these shades. That doesn't happen too often for me for entire collections!