Max Factor - Fantasy Fire

Okay, I know, I know... the hype around this nail polish has been over for a while now. But ever since I laid my eyes on it, it has been on my wish list. Multichromes, duochromes, holos... anything that shifts colours is my weakness. This does not only go for nail polish, but also jewelry and other things. I had to have it one day.

Well, a few days ago I was browsing a huge Dutch webshop known as Bol.com for a birthday gift for my boyfriend, when I got distracted and ended up on the sales page, and via the sales page I ended up browsing through their nail polish when I saw they had this baby stocked. I got super excited because I could never find it in the drugstore that sells it and the prices online were ridiculous. Ofcourse, I ordered it right away.

Fantasy Fire is an amazing multichrome shimmer to be used as a top coat. And basically, it's liquid magic.

It's similar to the famous polish known as 'unicorn pee', Clarins 230. While they are not the same, Fantasy Fire is a nice and affordable alternative for 230.

Sadly, I got it in a mini bottle. I would have liked a larger sized bottle but this is okay too. Not wanting to waste a drop, I used two coats of Fantasy Fire over Revlon Plum Night, a dark purple that works quite well as a base for this topcoat.

And just look at those colours! The shimmer shifts from red to orange, gold to green, and in certain angles it's blue, though I wasn't able to capture that on camera. It's amazing, and like I said: liquid magic. When I was wearing this I kept staring at my nails.

Yes, I am very happy I finally found this polish at an affordable price. It took a while, but that is one awesome polish scratched off of my wish list. :)

What nail polish have you been lusting after?

Essence Gel-Look Topcoat - Bubble horrors!

I just want to express my disappointment here. For a while I have been trying out the Essence Gel-Look Topcoat because it was promised to be fast drying and leave a gel-like look on the nails.

 At first I was pretty happy with this topcoat. It does leave a glossy shine on your nails. But it has to be the slowest drying topcoat I have ever tried. I had to be very careful even hours after doing my nails, and still I'd end up with dents and scratches all over my manicure. Okay fine, I thought. I can work around that by doing my nails during a TV show or a movie so I can sit and do absolutely nothing. That worked fine enough for a while, because I ran out of my other topcoat and since there aren't many stores near me I didn't have a chance to pick up a new one.

After a week or so the topcoat started becoming really gloopy and thick. It was very hard to control and I'd end up with a thick layer of topcoat which took even longer to dry than it did before. I don't have any type of thinner though, so this was quite a disappointment. At least it still applied smoothly, or so I thought.

But now, with my past few manicures, it has gotten even worse. Apart from being gloopy and thick, it didn't even apply smooth anymore. Also, I now get bubbles. A lot of them. All over my nails, over every manicure, no matter what I do. I'm not always the brightest person, so when I did my first successful attempt at gradient and saran wrap nails I put this topcoat over it to smoothen things out. After a few minutes I wanted to kick myself in the head for making that horrible, horrible decision.

Bubbles. Sad bubbles.

This picture is cringe worthy, I'm not sure why I even watermarked it, because no one in the world would want to steal this picture, lol! Just ook at all those bubbles and how bumpy it is. It even made my gradient look a lot worse. Topcoat... Y U DO THIS? :(

Honestly I'm not sure if every bottle is like this or if I happened to get a bad one, but I do know that this one is going in the trash and I'm picking up at least one new top coat tomorrow! Have you tried this topcoat? Did you like it or was your experience with it as horrendous as mine? Do you have any topcoats to suggest to me? I'd love to hear them.