Confessions of a Nail Polish Newbie--OPI Topcoat vs. Essie Faceoff Results!

If you'll recall, earlier this week I decided to see if recent issues with nail polish chipping were related to the OPI for Sephora topcoat I had been applying.  Prior to this endeavor I'd put on three coats of polish and one of the topcoat around two hours before going to bed at night.  I'd been seeing chips within 24 hours, even when using brands that usually lasted much longer for me.

Results:  Right Hand (featuring OPI for Sephora topcoat on top of three coats of Essie)

Note the gargantuan chip on the tip of my index finger--this started less than 10 hours after applying the polish, and just got worse over the next 60 hours.

Left Hand: Essie Highly Structured (3 coats) with no topcoat

You can see that I had a small amount of peeling on my pinky cuticle (and some weirdness around the ring finger cuticle as well) but only minimal tip wear.  Moreover, NO CHIPPING!

Now, I'm not ready to completely throw in the towel on OPI topcoat yet, but consider this experiment Exhibit A in OPI's keep or toss trial.  At a minimum, I'm venturing to say that this topcoat doesn't work any better than polish alone on my fingers, and may very well cause premature chipping.

Stay tuned, and in the meantime, if you have any must-try top or basecoat recommendations for me, I'd love to hear about them!

Confessions of a Nail Polish Newbie--Essie and OPI Topcoat Review

Last night I decided to try a little experiment.  After having horrible chipping all week with Chanel Black Pearl (which, WTF?) it occurred to me that the problem may not be my polish--it may be my topcoat.  The topcoat I've been using is OPI for Sephora, and if you'll recall I completely stopped using OPI basecoat after a number of very fast-chipping manicures. 

So last night I applied three coats of Essie Highly Structured to my left hand, and three coats of Essie plus one coat of OPI topcoat to my right hand.  I figured it would take at least 24 hours to see any difference between the two hands, for better or for worse.

Wrong.  Nine hours after application (two hours of drying time last night while I read a book and then seven asleep) I got my first chip.  ON MY RIGHT HAND.  I didn't do anything chip-worthy, just took a shower and got dressed for the day, and yet a significant chip popped up on my right index finger.

I'm not ready to swear off OPI topcoats after this one incident, but I'll be keeping a very close eye on both hands in the coming days to see which one fares better.