Quite possibly the worst nail polish ever

source: Essie.com

I'm not exactly a nail polish expert, however I know a bad polish when I try it. When I first seen Essie's Encrusted Treasures holiday collection, I was really excited about the collection. In the bottles, they all look gorgeous. I even purchased one of them and fell in love. So I thought that I'd try one of the textured polishes they have as part of the collection. I've tried textured polishes before (OPI liquid sand) and loved it. So I figured that Essie's would be great as well.

I was wrong.

Belugaria looks beautiful in the bottle. A nice, solid black with holographic hexagonal glitter spread throughout. Surely it was going to make for an amazing textured polish.

Application was a disaster. Not only was it very chunky, it dried super quickly which made it that much more of a nightmare when trying to add more polish to even it out. The chunks wasn't because of the glitter, it was actually because of the texture. I bet I could take a black polish, throw some sugar or granulated sea salt, mix it up and get the same effect.

Once it was applied, it was patchy so I decided to add another layer. Bad idea. While it did even it out (kinda), it also made it that much chunkier looking. It didn't look like the sand texture that we're used to. Au contraire, it looked like a kid tried painting my nails with old clumpy nail polish or that I used Rock Guard with added glitter (Rock Guard is a product that people use to protect the box of their truck)

By now, you're probably thinking the same as I was: a top coat must make it 100 times better. Nope. I added two coats of top coat and it didn't do anything other than make it a little glossier. I suppose I could have played a game to see how many layers would be needed to make it smooth(ish), but at that point I decided that I didn't want to waste the top coat, that unfortunately, Belugaria just wasn't worth it.

My thumb, which actually had the best application, with top coat, vs ring finger with no top coat

After 24hours, the nail that did not have any top coat started chipping. Upon removal (which was quite the challenge - easier to try to chip most of it off then use nail polish remover), it truly did look like there was sugar in the mix! (my earlier guess about sugar or sea salt was written while I still had the polish on)

It is the worst polish I have ever tried and quite possibly one of the worst polishes out there.

*hugz*

-Sam