Powder Perfect Christmas Collection 2014

I know, I know, a Christmas collection already! But Jacinta who runs Powder Perfect is so Christmas Crazy I'm frankly surprised she waited this long to release her collection. As with last year's hugely popular Christmas release, this year's collection is once again inspired by the Home Alone movies.

First off the ranks we have What Is It With You And Christmas Trees?, a question I've asked of Jacinta myself more than once.

 

What Is It With You And Christmas Trees is a lovely, well, tree green crelly with a generous sprinkling of various glitters. I spotted holographic hexes in three sizes, green triangles and bars, some teeny tiny silver glitters, and a couple of big round circle glitters. 

 The overall effect is very much one of a Christmas Tree covered in baubles and tinsel, and application was surprisingly easy. I sometimes struggle to get crellys to sit evenly, but this was three thin coats with a little bit of prodding of glitters.

The other crelly in this collection I was given to try is Prettiest Sight to See; this one is something I would probably never choose for myself, but once it was on my nails I was surprised by how delicate and feminine the overall look was.

Unfortunately the pictures came out rather more stark white on my nails than the polish is in real life - the macro below is a better capture of the creamy, ever so slightly off white that it actually is. The big gold and pink hexes, medium lavender hexes, and small holo and gold hexes come together just beautifully.

As with Christmas Trees, I was pleasantly surprised by how easy to use the formula on this crelly was. Once again, these swatches are three thin coats alone, with no need for a white base in order to get smooth, even opacity.

 

Along with the crellies, this collection also features a glitter topper called Candy Canes and Silver Lanes Aglow, which I swatched here over Mr. Cheap Skate from last year's Christmas collection.

 

As you can see from the macro below, this polish features an absolute riot of colour. The iridescent sparks really work to lift it above your basic "glitter in a clear base" topper formula.

 

And now, to my favourite part of the collection - THE GLITTERS!

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas just might be pretty enough to get this Grinch excited about Christmas - I mean, jesus, just look at it. With just the right amount of warmth and a generous amount of holographic glitter in between the red, this is just stunning.

There are a lot of glitter polishes that you have to take out in the sun to really coax the sparkle out of them, but I've never had that issue with any of the Powder Perfect glitters. As you can see from the indoors shot below, even under diffused artificial light these babies twinkle away!

The Stars Are Brightly Shining is a slightly different sort of glitter to the ones I've seen from Powder Perfect before, in that the base is actually clear. But there's SO MUCH silver and sparkle you'd be hard pressed to notice once it's on the nail.

As you can see, there's absolutely no coverage issues here. However, the clear base and jam packed glitter make this absolutely perfect for gradient manicures, as you can see over on my Instagram.

Christmas in A Tropical Climate is the perfect companion to Stars Are Brightly Shining - it's pretty much the same clear base/intense glitter coverage formula, but in a gleaming gold. It seems to have a touch more holographic glitter in it than Stars, but that might just be my eyes.

I haven't had a chance to experiment myself, but I think this would look INCREDIBLE as a gradient over It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas.

Now, I've saved the absolute best for last, to reward those of you kind enough to read this massive post all the way to the end. This polish is so gorgeous I gasped out loud when I opened the package. Presenting Merry Christmas Ya Filthy Animal!

 

I'm not going to lie to you, this polish gives me shivers. The colour, the glitter, the holo sparks...it's all just perfect.

And that's the lot! If you don't pick up Merry Christmas, Ya Filthy Animal at the very least, then I just don't know what to say. This collection is available now from Powder Perfect!