Guest Post: Battle of the Crackle Nail Polishes

By: Whitney at Elemental Styles

Hey everyone! I’ve been really busy finishing up school lately but ever since Opal asked me a few weeks ago to do a guest post I've been racking my brain on what I could possibly talk about! I was going to do another “What’s in your Bag” post, but then I ran across a total of five different displays of crackle nail polishes while I was out yesterday and thought I’d do a little comparison for you all!

Most recent sighting at Walgreens: Pure ICE Crackles!

Icing has jumped on the bandwagon, too!

Now I’m only going to compare three different brands for you today: OPI, China Glaze, and Burst

Crackles, but there’s a ton of others out there with even more varieties of colors if you don’t want to pay OPI or China Glaze prices! Sally Hansen has their Crackle Overcoat polishes in 8 different colors

including silver and gold, ICE has their Crackle Nail Effects in a whole bunch of colors that you can see in the picture above, not to mention other brands such as MIA Secret, Icing, Barry M, Kelier, and Kleancolor all have jumped on the bandwagon for this crackle polish trend!

The Crackle colors that I am going to show you include:

OPI: Black; Turquoise

China Glaze: Crushed Candy (Teal), Lightning Bolt (White), and Fault Line (Purple)

Burst: Violet Flame (Purple), and Shimmering Heat (Pink)

OPI

China Glaze

Burst Crackle

For OPI you can see the Black Shatter cracks into small strewn out pieces when applied over a glittery polish (Glamorous from Icing) but shatters into slightly larger chunks when applied over a normal polish (Turquoise Shatter over Essie Braziliant).

The China Glaze crackles all break consistently and remind me of a fibrous tree or something! The white more so than the other colors, though. You can see they break into decently large chunks with a few major fault lines down the center. From left to right the China Glaze crackles seen are: Crushed Candy over Sinful Colors Savage, Lightning Bolt over ORLY Velvet Rope, and Fault Line over For Audrey!

The Burst Crackles I did not have a ton of luck with, although I’ve seen them look great on other blogs. They are not consistent in their crackling as you can see from the picture, although I got Shimmering Heat to look great on my second try. In the picture above you can see: Violet Flame over China Glaze White on White, Shimmering Heat over Sinful Colors Unicorn, and Shimmering Heat over China Glaze Happy Go Lucky. Unfortunately after using Violet Flame twice, this is the best I got out of it! However, Dandy Nails on YouTube makes it all look very easy when she applies ten different Burst Crackle colors here!

Overall I think my favorites are the OPI shatters, and I loved the black shatter over glitter. They run about $8 or $9 in stores and online! The Burst polishes, however, I picked up at a nail supply store for I believe less than $2, which is why I thought I’d give them a try! I still would like to master these crackles since they are so cheap and I've seen other bloggers make them look great. I’d definitely recommend you trying them if you can find them if you are into the shattered look!

The trick to using any shatter polish is to apply ONLY on a completely dried base color and to use one very thin coat! I think this is why my OPI Turquoise Shatter didn’t turn out as well as the Black Shatter did—my coats were just slightly too thick! It definitely takes some practice to get the coat thickness ideal so I’d recommend swatching on a nail wheel a few times to get it down. Another tip I have is to make sure that you do not go over with the shatter polish where you've already painted. It dries and shatters almost instantly (at least these brands do) and when you paint over it again, you’re essentially painting over the crackle and it won’t show up!

If you’re into the shatter look, I’ve found you can find at least one type of brand nearly anywhere that sells polish. Not to mention more come out everyday! China Glaze is coming out with a collection of metallic crackles later this month so keep an eye out for those!

If you guys have any questions about crackles or my blog, feel free to e-mail me at EStyles.WW@gmail.com! 

Thanks for having me!

<3 Whitney (Elemental Styles)