Sally Hanson Big Matte Top Coat Review

Today I'll be reviewing the Sally Hanson Big Matte Top Coat, this product was released in the recent I Heart Nail Art collection from Sally Hanson with a variety of other "Big" top coats. They have a Big Shiny Top Coat, Big Glitter Top Coat, Big Smokey Top Coat, Big Shimmer Top Coat, and a Big Crackle Top Coat. The only other one I am curious about trying is the smokey top coat, I've never seen or heard of another product that is a smokey top coat. But the display I saw at my local CVS only had the matte and shiny top coats still in it, if I had the option I would've picked that one up too. I know Sally Hanson makes some amazing top coats and that made me confident enough to pick this one up because it was a total impulse buy.

Two coats of Revlon Colorstay Bold Sangria with one coat of the Big Matte Top Coat

 As you can see one coat totally mattifies the polish and I left a sliver of polish without the top coat to show the contrast. 

After 3-4 days of wear

Unfortunately after a few days of wear time the completely flat matte turns into what I would call somewhere between a glossy matte and satin finish. It hasn't totally turned shiny, as you can see the sliver at the base of the nail is still a bit more shiny. If I wanted to I could re-apply and that would take away the shine, but I wanted to just stick with one for this review's sake. And since Revlon Colorstay polish is very long wearing I really can't say if this extended the wear of my polish at all even thought it didn't claim to. Because this is the only matte top coat I own I don't know if this fading is normal, but I intend on purchasing a "high-end" (OPI or Essie) matte top coat  for comparison and then I can possibly recommend or not recommend this product as I will mention in the haul when it is uploaded on Friday. When that video does go live you can view it by clicking the videos tab at the top of the page. And on a somewhat related note if you want to keep up to date with my posts you can follow me on Bloglovin or Google Friend Connect which are also at the top of the page.

Wet 'N Wild Fast Dry Nail Polish Gift Set Review and Swatches

First of all I would like to say a big thank you to my best friend in the whole entire world, Becca for gifting me this for Christmas this year and making this review possible. She said she got this set at Wegmans and I don't know if it's available anymore but all these colors are permanent in their regular line so you can still buy the full sizes of all 8. The full size polishes sell for $1.99 a piece if you were interested. All swatches were done without top or base coats. Also I am going to apologize for my inability to paint my nails and not get polish on my cuticles beforehand.

I love how these polishes are named after TV shows, and I'm glad they have names because numbers don't have any resonance with me. The first two are Everybody Loves Redmond and The Gold & the Beautiful. 

2 coats of Everybody Loves Redmond

Everybody Loves Redmond is a jelly red bordering on scarlet with no shimmer, and as you can see it is pretty opaque in 2 coats. 

3 coats of The Gold & the Beautiful

The Gold & the Beautiful is an orangy gold glitter, but the glitter isn't dense enough to be worn alone. As you can see above my nail is still visible through the polish.

1 coat of The Gold & the Beautiful over 2 coats of Buffy the Violet Slayer

It looks much better as a glitter top coat, and gives a nice even finish over the entire nail in one coat.

Now I realized I photographed them out of order...but  the next two I swatched were Silvivor and Saved by the Blue.

2 coats of Silvivor

Silvivor is your standard metallic silver foil polish, nothing special about it.

2 coats of Saved by the Blue

Saved by the Blue is a metallic royal blue, again pretty opaque in 2 coats but a third would make it solid.

The second to last group I swatched were SaGreena the Teenage Witch and Buffy the Violet Slayer

3 coats of SaGreena the Teenage Witch

SaGreena the Teenage Witch is a nice emerald green with shimmer. This polish was the only one I had application problems with, it was patchy and streaky on the first 2 coats abut the third evened it out.

2 coats of Buffy the Violet Slayer

Buffy the Violet Slayer is a royal purple with shimmer, and this is my favorite color from this set .

And the last two in the set are Party of Five Glitters and the Clear Coat

1 coat of Party of Five Glitters over 1 coat of Saved by the Blue

Party of Five Glitters has large silver, medium pink, blue, and green, and small red hexagonal glitter. If applied properly in one coat you can get good coverage across the whole nail. And the clear coat is nothing special, just a clear nail polish.

And now that we are done with swatches let's talk about the formula, wear time etc. This polish claims to dry in 60 seconds so I broke out the timer to test that.

And it did dry in under 60 seconds! Yay! But when wearing these polishes without a base coat but with the included top coat I see major chipping within 1 or 2 days. That can be easily fixed with a heavy duty base and top coat. A few of these shades are very unique and worth picking up like Everybody Loves Redmond, The Gold & the Beautiful, Party of Five Glitters, Buffy the Violet Slayer, and Saved by the Blue. The ones that aren't worth it are Silvivor because it's such a basic shade and you can find the same shade with a better formula for around the same price, SaGreena the Teenage Witch for the bad application and the Clear Coat because there are much better topcoats at the drugstore. If you do see this kit though I would recommend picking it up.
P.S. The file sucks don't even bother.