China Glaze Tronica

When Tronica was announced, I was excited. Twelve new holographic polishes from the brand that brought us the OMG and Kaleidoscope collections? Yes, sign me up! Then when the first swatches started to show up, I went into pouting mode, as these new holos looked weak and scattered compared to their older siblings. The long gap between when these were available to professionals and when they were slated to be released to the public at Sally Beauty gave me a chance to get over my disappointment and resolve to appreciate these new polishes for their own merits. Except once I'd decided I needed them, I couldn't find them. Despite how often I stop by Sally stores, I never ever saw a full display of these in the wild. There are four Sally's locations on my regular polish hunting routes, and I only saw Tronica at one of them, and it was already picked clean of what I considered the good colors. Some people might have taken this as a sign to give up, but I decided to do something I've never done before (and don't intend to make a habit of)—I bought a full display kit from the Sally's website:



I would have bought individual bottles if I could have, but by the time I'd decided to stop hunting them in stores, the colors I wanted most were sold out and only available as part of the display package. Thus I ended up with way more Tronica than I planned, but swapping and my recent contest have pretty much taken care of the excess.

Here's my curent favorite from the collection, Virtual Violet. It was almost a one-coater; I did two because I never expected it to be as pigmented as it is so didn't do a great job applying the first coat. In the indirect indoor illumination of my light box, the holo was pretty shy, as these next two photos show.





In the sun, which every so often does put in an appearance around here in between rainstorms, the sparks of rainbow colors pop out.





I can appreciate scattered holos, but I hope down the road we see a reappearance of linear holos, the same way we're now getting crack all over the place after not seeing any new releases of it for years.