China Glaze Awakening Collection - $10 at transdesign.com

When Halloween collections start being released, it's such an exciting time for me. Among other things it means that Autumn is nearly here, and I'm not exaggerating when I say I absolutely LIVE for Fall! Another thing is that the "holiday" itself is just a lot of fun. It's pretty much also guaranteed that there will be awesome nail polishes coming. My first Halloween purchase of this year is China Glaze's Awakening collection. Not to be confused with China Glaze's pink-with-gold-sheen shade of polish, this is a set of three super cool glitter polishes. Last year's Fortune Teller by China Glaze was one of my favorite polishes ever. Spellbound was another that they released for Halloween but sadly I didn't manage to get my hands on that one, and I'm still bruised by that, haha. This year I bought the Halloween set the very day it went online, and I'm pretty happy with it. I've swatched and reviewed each of the three shades below, so click to keep reading!

Ick-a-Bod-y - China Glaze does love their hyphenated names... This is a murky green base loaded to the brim with orange glitter. It's much different from Fortune Teller because the base is green rather than black, but the glitter is much smaller and more profuse in Ick-A-Bod-Y. In fact the base is really hard to see because the glitter is so strong, it almost floats to the top. Two coats gave me decent coverage, but three thin coats to get the glitter evenly distributed would probably be a technique I'd recommend for this one. Overall, very cute. Love the name, love the glitter!

Mummy May I - Another adorable name, I love them! If you've got Wet n Wild Night Prowl, Petites Black Amethyst or Lippmann Bad Romance, you might feel compelled to pass this one up. That wouldn't sound crazy to me, but I still felt the need for this one. It's a bit different than all of those because it's in a eggplant jelly base so it looks a lot more purple than black at arms length. I think that this is tied for second place in the Magenta Glitter Polishes drawer in my brain with Bad Romance, (first place goes to Zoya Roxy which is magenta glitter in a magenta base).

Zombie Zest - This is my least favorite, to be honest. Though I love the strange undead green look of it, it's a bit sheer even at three coats. It does have a bit of an ear wax undertone to the color, (yes I'm aware that was a foul description but after all, it's named after rotting re-animated corpses), but that adds to it's "offness" which is cool. It's quite similar to Orly It's Not Rocket Science (which I have reviewed and I'll post that later this week) but it's actually a bit more delicate. What I mean by this is that the flecks of shimmer are less strong than the Orly polish. Light passes through these flecks and gives them a much more delicate feel, and this finish creates a really neat combination with the weird color.

All three were rather sheer in the base, but they're all really cool. If you're going to purchase one open stock, I would recommend Ick-A-Bod-Y for sure! Overall the collection is really cute, original and inexpensive and I think it's worth the purchase especially because China Glaze special collections like this tend to sell out fast.