Crackin up over your nail art?

Well it seems I'm not the only one out there blessed with bundles of lovely presents from the cosmetic and beauty counters. On Wednesday I got a text from one of my besties asking me had I heard about Rimmel's Crack Your Colour Nail Polish. She went on to explain that its gloopy and thick and goes on kinda funny and asked had I used them and suggested maybe I blogged about it! So here I am and Yvonne - this one is for you!!

The Detail:

Nail art has always been a popular choice to accent your tips and grab attention and in current recessionary times there has been an explosion of DIY options on the market from wraps to magnetic nails to the almost mandatory crackle range in each brand out there. Surprisingly crackle polish first hit the market via high street brand Barry M only later to be adopted by the higher end pro brands. Crackle came to us in Autumn 2010 and by now we have seen almost every polish line run their own version. The idea is the polish shrinks on the nail bed as it dries, cracking and revealing the colour underneath. Yvonne kindly donated her bottle for the cause and rather unsurprisingly I had a couple of bottles of crackle polish myself that I'd picked up last summer out of curiosity!

Rimmel Crack Your Colour €5.25

Available in black only

W7 Crackle Polish £5 (not presently available in Ireland)

Available in 9 colours

The Images:

The 3 x W7 ones and the Rimmel one:

Each of the black crackle polishes, Rimmel on the left (middle finger) and W7 on the Right (index finger):

All four polishes on:

The Sciencey Bit:
Well thanks to the clever bunch over at The Beauty Brains I have found out just how this works. Ethanol is added to the polish which makes it dry quickly and unevenly. Completely opposed to the flawless finish of regular polish you get an irregular, uneven polish that shrinks and therefore cracks as it dries. This is why the polish can often look thick and gloopy and generally unappealing to regular polish users.


The Conclusion:

Humm, well personally the crackle look just isn't really for me.  I find it can look well if you get the right combination of colours but god help us if you don't it just looks a bit 80's! Also while it's supposed to be an easy to achieve look it can take a while to achieve as your base colour MUST be completely dry for the crackle coat to work and if you don't cover the crackle layer with a top coat you can actually just scrap it off! (it also looks quite dull and matte). Me? I'd rather use a nail art pen to draw on stripes, dots or flowers than watching LAYERS of nail paint dry! 

However if you do like the crackle effect beware that most of the look is achieved through your application skill. You can't really layer it up as it ruins the crackle effect so apply one layer (in one or two strokes that don't overlap) thinly for small fissures or a slightly thicker layer for larger cracks. I've come across lots of different brands ranging from €3 - €13 doing crackle so my advice would be not to spend too many pennies on these as they all seem to produce similar end results (as shown in picture 2 above!). In my opinion the best thing about crackle is that you can use it to get an extra couple of days out of your manicure if you have a few wee chips appearing at the top - lash on a bit of crackle over it for a fast fix!