Dystopia: 12 Days of Christmas Swatch and Review
Hello everyone! I’m very excited to be sharing my swatches for half of the Christmas 2020 collection from Dystopia with you all. Sara has created 12 beautiful polishes, all inspired by the famous ‘12 Days of Christmas’ carol, for the holiday season and sent me the first six polishes for swatches, however as always that doesn’t influence my opinion on the polishes. I will be honest, when I first opened the package they didn’t quite scream Christmas to me but swatching them I was pleasantly surprised by how beautiful these are for the winter, so let’s get stuck right in.
Please note: All swatches are shown topped with the Glisten and Glow Fast Drying Topcoat, unless stated otherwise.
‘A Partridge in a Pear Tree’
The first shade in the collection is, of course, ‘A Partridge in a Pear Tree’, a very autumnal multichrome which shifts from green to brown to copper. As a multichrome lover this is obviously one of my top picks from my half of the set. The colours shift between each other very easily and it’s very effective. The formula was smooth and easy to work with, I was able to build it up to full opacity in three coats, but if you have much shorter nails than me you could get away with two.
‘Two Turtles Doves’
‘Two Turtles Doves’ is a sparkly turquoise base accented with copper glitter. This polish is such a rich shade and has a lot of depth in the glitter. This polish is definitely something that I would not usually gravitate towards and is very unique to my collection and really sparkled in the sunlight. This also had a smooth formula and once again opaque in three coats. This does have a lot of glitter in this, so it will be difficult to remove unless you use a peel-off basecoat but it’s so worth it!
‘Three French Hens’
‘Three French Hens’ is a vivid orange shade with an orange/golden shimmer running through. This shade came as the biggest surprise to me coming in a Holidays collection but oranges are always perfect winter shades, especially when they’re as vibrant as this one! Orange is also not usually a colour I gravitate towards but I was so pleased with how fiery this looked on me and cannot wait to wear it again. This has a jelly-like formula, quite squishy on the brush-strokes but still not difficult to reach desired opacity, once again opaque in three-coats on my nails
‘Four Calling Birds’
Next is ‘Four Calling Birds’, another one of my top picks from this half of the set. This is a metallic black base packed with silver, blue and violet holographic glitter. ‘Calling birds’ is thought to refer to ‘Colly birds’ which is a type of Blackbird and this is where the inspiration for this polish came from! I don’t think my photos did the holographic effect in this justice but it is very strong in real life, really stunning, and sparkles in direct light! Again, I was able to reach full opacity in three coats.
‘Five Gold Rings’
Of course we can’t have a Christmas collection without the quintessential gold shimmer! ‘Five Gold Rings’ is the perfect gold for the holiday season. This shade is made up of lots of tiny gold micro flakes and I reached full opacity in three thin coats. I didn’t have any issues with texture from the flakes or with visible brush strokes on my finished swatches. I received so many compliments wearing this and have loved using it in various nail art manicures I’ve done.
‘Six Geese A-Laying’
The final polish in this half of the collection is ‘Six Geese A-Laying’. This is the only topper in the whole collection. This features a clear base with a selection of various-sized black, white and silver holographic glitters. I did not have to do any manipulations or fishing, such as holding the bottle upside, to get any of the larger glitters out and it applied very smoothly. In my swatches I applied two thin coats over a medium-deep blue creme (OPI – ‘Duomo Days and Isola Nights). I chose this blue as I wanted to swatch this over a shade which would showcase all the glitters and also be representative of how I would wear this in real life.
