There’s nothing I like more than a designer collaboration that ends up in my price range.
I was pretty excited to hear about the Sally Hansen collection (which Prabal Gurung helped create and used in his videos featuring Rye Rye). All of the colors featured in the collection are available in your local drugstore (& some other places online – see below!).
Prabal Gurung has been partnered up with Sally Hansen since late summer last year, and has been churning out beautiful nail collections ever since. The first-ever resort collection debuted a video boasting four looks that are wildly vivid, yet serene with a few bold, daring accents.
Sally Hansen x Prabal Gurung
Among the looks were two solid colors, one metallic, and a deep black with gold crackle polish.
From left to right: Gilty Pleasure
The first bottle is a bit tough to evaluate as far as color goes, but from other reviews I’ve seen, it’s a beautiful, warm, gold metallic color that dries a little bit matte. Pacific Blue and Sun Kisses are ultra-vivid, high-gloss colors that border on neon, but don’t have the blinding, painful tone that neons do. Highly saturated, but not retina-burning.
I was pretty exited to try out the Crackle Overcoat – especially in Antiqued Gold. It seems like it would be so versatile! Taking an edgy idea like shattering nailpolish and using a brassy gold would make anything look classy, don’t you think?
I know the Crackle is supposed to go over Black Out (to technically match Prabal Gurung’s vision), but I couldn’t help layering it over the beautiful orange Sun Kissed.
These colors are really accurate. There isn’t too much gold pigment in the Crackle Overcoat which makes it really easy to match up with anything. The orange… wow. It was really tempting to just leave it plain. It’s so pretty! It’s definitely orange, and definitely bright, but much more of a sherbet color than any type of fruit or nuclear waste.
I’m definitely getting better at managing my unruly cuticles (my primary task for the July Manicure/Pedicure Challenge), but painting my left hand (I’m left-handed) is my next goal. Wow, is there ever a difference in quality between the two… Why I took pictures of my left hand, I don’t know. (It doesn’t look that bad, right?)
Wearing my turquoise ring with this color is maybe my new favorite thing. I am paler than pale, so this vibrant orange makes my skin look like it’s actually pigmented! The pop of blue in the ring is just about the same color as Pacific Blue – another color in Prabal Gurung’s collection. Clearly, they’re meant for each other.
I wanted to see what the original Crackle look was supposed to look like, so I grabbed some shiny, black polish (similar to Black Out, but made by Borghese), and coated my [messed up] pinkies with it, and covered it with a delicious coating of antiqued gold.
My Crackle Overcoat Review
I know, I’ve said it 500 times throughout this post, but honestly… I wasn’t really impressed. I know there are a billion different versions of this stuff on the market right now, so maybe there are some better ones out there, but this stuff needed some “assistance.”
The directions say to add a thick coat of polish but then adds, “depending on your desired effect” – so that really offers me no assistance in terms of what I’m “supposed” to do. I added everything from thick to thin, and the same thing happened both ways:
1. It would begin to dry almost immediately after hitting the nail, making it tough to even out/overlap the existing polish without messing up the previous coat.
2. A vertical line would be the first thick crack to appear. Every. Nail. Big vertical crack. Horizontal cracks were hard to come by for a while.
3. About 5 minutes into drying (PS – this product boasts a 60 minute “wet to set” time. Doesn’t bother me, but still worth noting), I’d get anxious about the absence of cracks and lightly “push” the polish, creating new cracks.
Conclusion: This is a neat product, but doesn’t nearly live up to the hype like I expected it to.
Have you tried Crackle? What do you think of the Prabal Gurung x Sally Hansen Collection?
Check out other posts that are part of the July Challenge: Manicure/Pedicures!