xSparkage Confessions of a Makeup Junkie
For the past week or so, I’ve had loads of you telling me about how Sally Hansen has released their own version of Crackle polish to add on to the ever-so-popular fad, and asked my opinion on it. I recently went to ulta (to be cheesy and find my face on a NYX display) and saw that they had the crackle polishes for sale. Of the colors available, the only one that wasn’t something I already had was 06, Antiqued gold. Since OPI and China Glaze are the real front runners in the crackle competition, I’m going to hold Sally Hansen to the bars that they have set, with price, brush, color opacity, and crackle ability. Let the games begin!
Initial Thought: The absolute first thing I thought when I opened this polish was that the smell of the polish was extremely strong! Usually nail polishes have a strong smell, but my face was about a foot away from the bottle and it smelled like i spilled a whole bottle of acetone remover. NOT a fan of that.
Price: The Sally Hansen Crackle Polish cost be $6.99, which in my opinion is quite high for a drugstore polish! I understand that they are giving in to a trendy idea, but when OPI and China Glaze are $7-8, it just throws me off to see a drugstore brand charging just as much. Though, I suppose, you are more likely to find a coupon or two for Sally Hansen (a twitter follower mentioned that CVS had $3 off coupons for the SH Crackle!)
Brush: The SH crackle brush is long and skinny, which is just about a polar opposite to a brush like OPI, which is medium length and wide, so you can get as much coverage in one swipe as possible. The SH brush covers maybe a quarter of my nail in each stroke, and my nailbed is fairly slender. this is also an issue because the brush doesnt pick up enough polish. I found myself having to swipe, dip, swipe, dip just for one nail! Layering with Crackle is considered a no-no because it diminishes the crackle, so if you don’t do it the way I said before, you end up with the polish starting strong and then becoming VERY sheer.
Color: I think it’s important for crackle polishes to be quite opaque, so that the crackle and the polish underneath it don’t mingle into an ugly color (good example- OPI Turquoise shatter. I wanted to use it on top of a neon orange, because blue and orange look great AGAINST each other, but because the turquoise is somewhat sheer, it almost left the areas the turquoise showed looking brown against the orange.) In addition to this, you want it opaque so you can do a relatively thin coat to achieve more crackle, as the thicker the coat of polish, the less crackle. This particular shade of SH Crackle definitely needs a thicker coat so that the crackle color is consistent and you can’t see the base color. In turn, this means less crackle effect.
Crackle Ability: The crackle ability on this polish is not my favorite. I like a super shattered effect, and you just cant get it from Sally Hansen crackles. You can see from the swatch, the polish cracks just a tiny bit throughout in a very thin line. That being said, that may be a selling point for some of you, if you’d rather have less crackle. I even tried to apply a thin coat to see if it would crackle more, but all I was left with was a sheer shimmery layer that looked like static on a tv, no cracks!
Overall: Other than being more wildly available, and unless you have a coupon to make these pretty cheap, I don’t think I’d recommend them. The color range isn’t unique for crackles, and the crackle ability is okay at best. I know that the China Glaze Crackles and OPI Shatters can be difficult to find, and if that’s the case then go for the Sally Hansen’s, but if you are looking to expand your collection, wait for the China Glaze Metal Crackles coming out later this summer. Bottom Line: Buy as a last resort.
Have you tried the Sally Hansen Crackle? Thoughts?
