Top Coat Stress Test: Claire’s Ombre Top Coat

Claire’s is an interesting place to shop for nail polish. From what I can tell, they’re one of the few brick and mortar places I check that put out some fairly innovative polishes. They’re the first place I ever encountered thermal and solar polishes. The quality of their polishes can be hit or miss, but I’ve bought enough hits over the year to justify buying more for science. Good sales don’t hurt either. That’s how I ended up picking up their Ombre Top Coat.

It’s not completely clear (no pun intended) how this is supposed to work. I asked the associate on duty, who genuinely had no idea either. There are no instructions on the bottle to provide guidance. She thought it was supposed to change like a thermal polish once it was applied based on the sticker on the cap.

That's a reasonable guess. However, it turns out this is a sheer white polish that’s meant to be layered to create an ombre effect.

I got out my bottle of Ulta Blue Holiday, my go to polish for testing out top coats. I used two coats of Blue Holiday, and then applied three coats of Ombre Top Coat.

Here’s what it looked like after I tried making an ombre mani.

It took me three tries to get these mediocre results. I started out with two coats of Blue Holiday, then layered three coats of Ombre Top Coat over that. The polish really doesn't really start building up until at least the second coat, and the glossiness of the finish makes it ever harder to see. I had hoped the darker polish would make the effect more pronounced, but no such luck. 

This is not a fast dry top coat, so it took ages for it to dry. I’m so spoiled on using Seche Vite on everything that I forgot I actually had to wait with this one. Whoops! I also found I needed to let each coat dry before I applied the next one. This stuff definitely requires patience. It does look nice and shiny though.

So, how did it hold up?

It did pretty well; it made it two days before the chips started. When it did, it actually started happening near my cuticles instead of at the tips of my nails.  

Being as this is a top coat, and a sheer one at that, it's useless for stamping and water marbling. I tried using it with nail vinyls to see if I could get the ombre effect to be more pronounced. Nope! The only thing that was more distinct was how hard this polish fails. If I used more than one coat, it built up too much and pooled in the vinyl and by my cuticle. Air bubbles, yay! No nice clean lines either. 

 

Verdict: Loser Polish

If I were to rate this strictly on the basis of durability, this would be Good. However, I don’t recommend buying it, especially at its full price of $5.50. If you want to do an ombre effect mani, I would say either use a regular sheer polish that has a use on its own, or go with three shades of the same color. This top coat requires too many layers to do its one job, and by that point it’s just not practical. Pass on this one.