Top Coat Stress Test: Dance Legend Sahara Crystal

I’ve made no secret of my love of textured polish. I love the finish, the wear time is frequently excellent, and it’s fun to use in nail art too. Sometimes I wish it came in certain colors that seem to be hard to find, so when I learned Dance Legend made a top coat that would make any polish textured, I had to check it out.

Sahara Crystal doesn’t look like something that’s textured in the bottle. It reminds me of Milani Sardina with smaller flecks. Once you put it on and it dries, there’s no questioning that it’s textured. I had a lot of fun trying it out on different polishes. I found two light coats gave me the best results. I let the first coat completely dry before I added the second. 

One thing I noticed is that this polish is thicker than average. Over the course of using it in a couple full manicures and a bunch of swatches I noticed I’ve already used up a good quarter of the bottle!

This top coat changes how polish looks depending on what type it is. Here are some swatches I did over some polishes I’ve already reviewed. In all cases, the swatch on the left is the polish in its natural state, the one on the right has Sahara Crystal over it. 

First, here's Claire's Money Bags. I really like how this one looks.

Next, we have Color Club's Burnt Out.  This looks okay, but the duochrome properties of this polish really don't show through very well.

Here's Colour Prevails Date Night. I think this one is my favorite.

This is Color Club Beyond. It turns out that holographic polishes don't play nice with this top coat. I tried this on a couple other holos and had the same result. Pity, a textured holo would have been awesome. 

Finally, here's Sparitual Intention. This one looks pretty nice too The glass flecks in Intention add a little extra sparkle over and above what Sahara Crystal does.

I didn’t try water marbling with this. It almost seems like you could stamp with it, but I was afraid to try. I don’t want to risk scratching up my stamping plates.

Now, on to the actual stress test. I used my beloved Ulta Blue Holiday. This is one of my very favorites.  I know this polish is excellent, and what to expect from it, so I put the same two coats of Sahara Crystal over it to see how it’d do. As you can see, this top coat lightens it up a bit and adds sparkle.

So, how’d it do?

Turns out this top coat significantly reduced the wear time on this one. That was a bit disappointing. It was done in after one day.

Verdict: Party Polish

I was hoping this would have the same wear as a full on textured polish, but that definitely isn’t the case here. It goes for $9, so that's something to keep in mind if you decide you want it.

Still, this top coat is fun! I look forward to using it to get textured colors I can’t find.