Last year Color Club came out with six holographic polishes called Halo Hues that were all pastel or light, and all had angelic names like Cherubic, Harp On It, Cloud Nine, etc. They were also expensive compared to most other Color Club polishes, $10 each at the company’s web site.
I thought they were pretty but not so different that I needed all of them and in fact I settled on just one, Halo-graphic, one of the two pinks. Took me forever to get around to swatching it, because I haven’t been in much of a light pink mood these past few months. But Holy Holos, Batman! It’s gorgeous.
The bottle is a full-sized 0.5 oz./15 ml and I bought mine at Head2ToeBeauty.com for $8. Formula and application were great. It applied smoothly with no streaking or brushstrokes at all, and dried quickly to glass-like smoothness. I needed two coats and it’s so shiny I didn’t use a top coat.
In reflected outdoor light, it merely looks like demure light pink shimmer.
How pretty. How cute. How girly. With the flash, Halo-graphic’s hidden personality starts to come out just a bit:
But then in direct sunlight you find that your little girl is a full-out wild child:
This is really how it looks; I’m not manipulating the image at all. It practically blinded my poor little camera. Extreeeeeeme linear holo!
One of the reasons I’m showing you Halo-graphic today is that Color Club has released a set of six NEW holos, also confusingly called Halo Hues. They are the Spring 2013 Halo Hues and are darker and generally less pastel than the 2012 ones. Apparently there was sort of a “the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing” mix-up with the new set, as Color Club didn’t officially announce them yet they are being sold on eBay and Amazon already, much to the confusion of consumers who wondered if these were counterfeits.
Since all photos I’ve seen of the new ones don’t seem to be public domain ones (so I can’t post them legally), let me point you in their direction. An Amazon seller. An eBay listing. Another eBay listing. Here’s one blogger who’s gotten the set and swatched all six, The Polished Cricket.
The color numbers, names, and descriptions are:
- 994 – Beyond – dark gray
- 995 – Cosmic Fate – light copper
- 996 – Kismet – pale golden green
- 997 – Over the Moon – sky blue
- 998 – Miss Bliss – rose pink
- 999 – Eternal Beauty – medium purple
I’m sure these will be widely available soon so there’s no need to pounce on all of them immediately unless you really want to. You can find some good prices on eBay but I have no knowledge of any of the sellers. Maybe with these coming out, the older Halo Hues will drop in price but I can’t say for sure.
2013 is really seeing lots of holographic polishes. As I mentioned way back last summer, China Glaze is coming out with a holo set later this spring called Hologlam. However, I just saw a few swatches from an Asian blogger (the Asia market sometimes gets new releases way before we go) and I am not impressed. Here and here. They just look like shimmers to me, although it could be the lighting. At any rate, I’m withholding judgement until I see a lot more swatches.
UPDATE: Just showed Halo-graphic to Mr. Silver Nail. He thinks it’s great!
Hello! Thanks for linking to my site, polishedcricket.com!
Just wanted to clarify about the formula’s application. I wrote that I had some troubles with streaking and clumping on just Over the Moon on the first coat. I thought it might have been user error because it was the first of the set I was swatching. The second and third coats of Over the Moon went on very well, and leveled out quite nicely. All the others applied very well, and I was happy with them.
I experienced bubbling with Miss Bliss and Eternal Beauty, but that was because I didn’t wait long enough for them to dry between coats. I was able to fix this by waiting for a bit longer for drying between coats.
Thanks again!
Thanks, Christine! I was going by your paragraph of “I found that these polishes apply best with three strokes: middle, then one on each side of the first stroke. Keep calm and take it slow. If you do more than the three strokes, you’ll end up with messy streaking and a little clumping. At least that’s what happened to me,” which was under your picture of Kismet. Thank you for the clarification!
You know what, you’re completely right!
That’s what I get for blogging until 1am. I’m just a few months into the whole blogging thing- sorry about that!
With the first polish (Over the Moon), on my first finger, I went over the same spot more than once, and I had some clumping/streaking. Then I changed how I applied it. So clumping was a problem, but then it wasn’t. I hope that’s not too confusing! It reminds me of how Nfu Oh 61 goes on, only not nearly as fussy regarding the streaks. I should correct my blog entry to reflect that there may be a learning curve to these polishes!
The exception is Beyond (the dark gray color):it’s a one coater, and applied like buttah!
Thanks for the feedback! Much appreciated, Ms. Silver Nail! <3
Thank YOU for the feedback! This helps everybody. Great to know that Beyond is a one-coater — don’t you just love that? Thanks again.
Just found your blog. Loving it – 52 here and the nail polish collection is growing by leaps and bounds. I purchased Harp On It and Cherubic out of the 2012 Color Clubs and now that I know the others are coming, I’ll be looking forward to getting them. I love holos. They are so distracting, though. Especially sitting at a traffic light. People get so annoyed when you don’t move exactly when the light turns. ;o)
hahahahahaha
Wow! That is wild. I love it. I picked up OTD Northern Lights and it really makes polish pretty.
Fabulous pix, and I’m also really glad you have the color descriptions because I wasn’t finding that *anywhere* else and it was driving me crazy!
I, for one, wouldn’t necessarily give up on Hologlam just yet, though… if they’re super-smooth, super-linear holos like the old OMGs they could maybe be more fickle for the camera than, say, the sparklier, coarser holos like the lovely Laylas? I’ve certainly seen lots of great pictures of OMGs for sure, but my own attempts to photograph mine always look like butt… so I don’t know.
Thank you, and you make some excellent points. Not giving up on Hologlam by any means! Those few shots are under who knows what kind of lighting, so I’ll gladly wait & see.
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