China Glaze Tronica - Rebooted with Spectraflair Pt 1

Because you must remember this: when China Glaze Tronica came out in 2011 there had been only a handful of holographic collections put out by salon brands. Indies were still birthing. A handful of other brands put out scant holos. OMG and Kaleidoscope collections were a distant, much missed, and much coveted. Around this time the prices for things like Sexagon and 2Nite jumped from the "normal" etailer price of $3 to around $15 and up. Unless you could score a lucky deal on eBay or find an obscure online seller who might have a few haunting their cyber shelves.

So when China Glaze came out with the Tronica collection, I think I tripped over myself to buy it off a seller on eBay.

Well, buyer's regret immediately set in as soon as I got them: holo was fine, scant, and required sunlight to really even do much of anything.

Now you can buy Color Club holos, Dance Legend, indies, and a host of brands have holos. It's no longer rare and people can pick and choose not only they type of holo effect they want but beyond the billions of colors that come in holos now, you can also get a ton of great top coats. No longer limited to two.

So I put my set aside and thought I'll buy some spectraflair 35 and see what I can do with these.

I purchased mine through Spectraflair4U. I purchased a 2 gram vial of 35, which is larger and imparts more flame than the really fine 14 (I'd already used 14 on a frankened, so I needed 35 for those and didn't use all 2 grams on the Tronicas).

A few things:

• All are two coats.
• All are over a matte.
• There is some dragging here and there, but not too bad.
• No top coat.
• Adding spectraflair was limited to volume available in the bottle. (very little)
• Success was mixed and as I used these, I will add more holo, but in truth, they need sunshine. Reblog? I'm not sure.

Important: I am comparing before my monkeying around with the original formula.

Left to right:

• Original
• W/Spectraflair
• Original
• W/Spectraflair

Let's get going on these!


China Glaze Mega Bite

A green gold that is not giving up any holo in this photo. From my vantage point I could see a difference, but after I downloaded the image, no love was found.

In person the holo is more scattered than linear, but this photo looks like I did nothing. Ugh.



China Glaze Hologram

Hologram is a thin polish, I wondered if it was a top coat. When I added the Spectraflair, it thickened up. The holo effect is more of a soft linear, but again, the photo fails to impress.




China Glaze Virtual Violet

A gorgeous medium purple. This is at the other end of the spectrum. The innate holo in the polish was giving up some good scattered effect, but the Spectraflair seemed to bring it up a notch, and it's looking like a small notch in this photo!
In person there was more holo love. For sure!




China Glaze Cyber Space

A lovely soft taupe holo.
It's like these photos cement a fail, but in person, the flame was very nice. You can just see it on my middle finger and in the bottle. This effect is beautiful. Nude holos are always so nice.




China Glaze Techno Teal

Beautiful polish and, trust me, it is very much improved with the holo. Yet, my camera and lighting did not bring it out. Code word: I did not bring it out. (It's a poor photographer who blames their equipment.)

Again you can see the bit of scant linear holo on the ring finger and pinkie as well as in the bottle. Seriously a case of "dammit, Jim, you need the sun!"




China Glaze Electric Magenta

More of a violet than a magenta, but who am I to quibble. Yet again, my photo really doesn't show the upgrade very well. Slight more density in comparing the index with the middle finger, plus some flame on the bottle.
Very pretty result.


Part two coming soon!

Thank you for reading my little nail polish journal!