Top Coat Stress Test: Claire’s Holographic Top Coat

I’ve tried a fair amount of Claire’s nail polishes at this point. The results have been consistently disappointing.  I keep purchasing them because they keep tempting me with interesting looking polishes, and having good sales on them. So, today’s test subject is their Holographic Top Coat.

This looks like their version of the well regarded Northern Lights top coat, which I have yet to try. The gimmick here is there’s fine holographic glitter in a clear base that all completely sinks to the bottom of the bottle. You need to shake it up before you apply it.

The formula is very watery. I felt almost like I’d bought a snow globe in a nail polish bottle! I put one modest coat over my beloved Ulta Blue Holiday. I wasn’t really happy with how it applied. As I put it on, it actually messed up my polish a little. This top coat seemed to drag the polish off my nails.  Even though I had three coats on, and it was completely dry before I put the holo top coat on, it ended up making my mani look patchy. I know it’s hard to see because it’s shiny, but trust me; this didn’t look so great in person. It’s most noticeable on my pinky. This is not something I would use over nail art; it’d get ruined for sure. On the positive side, the glitter distribution was evenly scattered and added a nice sparkle.

So, how did it perform?

A good hour after I’d put it on, when pretty much anything should be completely good to go, I got a fingerprint mark on one of my nails. I fixed that, thought I was all set. Within an hour of starting work the next day, I had catastrophic polish failure. It was like this top coat never really “cured”, and scraped off as I was working.

Verdict: Loser Polish

Wow. I have never seen a top coat act like this before! I don’t know what is up with this one, but the results speak for themselves. Save your $5.50 and do not buy this! Buy a proper snow globe instead.

Nail Polish Stress Test: Finger Paints Endless Wear I Louvre You

Any time I hear about a polish that is allegedly long wearing, I find myself both curious and suspicious. The last one I tried didn’t fare well at all. Even so, when I learned Finger Paints had come out with their own line of long wearing polish I figured I’d give it a shot. Was that a mistake? Let’s find out!

I picked up I Louvre You, a bubblegum pink polish with a very pretty shimmer and microflakies. I’d say this is a jelly, but it can be opaque in three coats, which is what I went with. I used the matching Endless Wear top coat to finish it off. 

   This polish dries very quickly, which is great in the sense that you can move on to doing other things in the meantime, but also renders this polish useless for stamping or water marbling.

On to the critical part; how well did it hold up?

It didn’t. At the end of the first day I had noticeable tip wear, but I decided to push it to a second day. That was a mistake as I had catastrophic polish failure.

Verdict: Loser Polish

I’m being a bit harsh here as I’ve rated other polishes that have lasted one day higher than this, but they didn’t promise to last up to ten days either. Save your money and buy something else instead.