Review: Essence Cracking Nailpolish

A while ago I bought cracking nailpolish from the cheap make-up brand Essence, and I tried it out last week. I used Essence 02 Sparkling Silver cracking base colour and Essence 01 crack me! black cracking top coat. This silver base colour can be replaced by any other colour nailpolish, but I decided to go with this one for the first time. The black cracking topcoat can also be replaced by a different colour cracking topcoat. Essence also sells a white one, and I bought that as well but I don't really like the colour of that one.

 

Essence 02 Sparkling Silver and Essence 01 Crack me! black on my nails.

It is really easy to create the crackling effect with these two nailpolishes. Start off by applying a coat of the base colour. I had to apply 2-3 coats to make it nice and opaque. Let this dry (on the bottle of the base colour it says that you have to let it dry for 4 minutes, but basically you should just wait till it has fully dried) and then take the cracking top coat. Applying the top coat goes really fast because you only need to apply one coat per nail. I found out that applying a thin coat gives a lot of small/thin cracks (see right two nails on picture), and applying a thick coat gives fewer but bigger cracks (see left two nails on picture). So depending on what you like, apply a thin or a thicker coat. It is important that you apply this coat in one go, because the nailpolish starts cracking within a few seconds. When everything is dry, apply a transparant top coat (I used one from Hema). I applied the nailpolish on Thursday evening, and the first chips appeared on Saturday, but that's probably because I went climbing that day. I have now been wearing the nailpolish for about 4 days and it has chipped on some nails, but it's not really ugly yet. 

Essence 02 Sparkling Silver
Advantages: nice colour, not too glittery
Disadvantages: 2-3 coats need to be applied before it is really opaque
Buy it or not? yes, for the cheap price (I don't remember the exact price, but I think it was about 1,50 euros) it is very good! But if you have more money it is probably better to invest in a better silver colour.

Essence 01 Crack me! Black
Advantages: only one coat needed, very opaque colour, cracks very nicely, does not chip fast
Disadvantages: none
Buy it or not? yes, definitely buy it! For the cheap price (about 1,50 euros) this is an amazing crack nailpolish. I am very happy with it.

Where to buy these products:
In The Netherlands Essence is sold at most Kruidvat shops, and these nailpolishes cost about 1,50 euros (I don't remember the exact price) each. I don't know about other shops or countries.

What do you think of cracking nailpolish?