I’ve done a bad bad thing. I’ve been cheating . . .on my Seche Vite top coat.

When I first started using Seche Vite, it literally changed the life of my manicures. I could do my nails and be ready to use my hands again in less than five minutes. For someone as chronically impatient as I am, that is very important. Ask anyone who has taken a long time to get ready when we’re going out. It’s a virtue that I don’t posses. I’m the worst.

But Seche Vite has a down side, and that’s the shrinkage (It also thickens up halfway through the bottle and becomes unusable but that’s an issue for another day). As it hardens on the nail over the first 12 hours it shrinks back from the edges of the making it look as if you have some tip wear by the end of the first day. For a long time I accepted that that’s just how it is if you want a top coat that dries so quickly, until now. Dun dun dunnnnn . . . drama, suspense!

I’ve been a little annoyed with the shrinkage issue for a while now, and have really been on the hunt for something new, and everything has let me down. It just so happened that I was out of both my base and top coats last week when i saw that you can buy the whole Formula X System at Sephora, and I figured I might as well give it a go.

The fun thing about the set is that you get to choose whatever color you want with it, not some predetermined choice. I chose the shade A+ which is a rasberry pink-red. To be honest, not my favorite color of all time, but that’s my fault. I was trying to pick something I didn’t already have something similar too . . .guess theres a reason I don’t have one like it, duh. It’s a pretty color, just not something I’m going to reach for a lot.

Anyway, on to the formula. It’s kind of amazing It goes on smooth, no pooling or streaking, and sets to a very hard shiny finish. The topcoat dries as quickly as Seche Vite and I experienced NO shrinkage whatsoever. It is also insanely glossy which is a huge plus.

To test the wear time I followed the exact instructions, rather than following my usual home recipe for a lasting manicure.

On the second day, still glossy and pretty, but some nails are showing a tiny bit of wear on the tips. Note the end of the pinky, lookin’ a little gnarly but only if you get really close.

Day 3 . . .still shiny, what the what? My nails are usually dull as a chalkboard by the third day. As you can see there is a tiny little chip on the tip of the thumb, but nothing that would make even my crazy ass take it off and repaint it. There is also a tiny bit of chipping starting on the side of the pointer finger, but again no biggie.

Day 4, big chip on the right thumb. Wommp woooooomp. To be completely fair though, my nails are very prone to chipping, as I have mentioned before. My polish always chips after four days if not sooner, and that’s WITH doing my whole routine that I explained in a past post. Not to mention that I played basketball like a maniac the night before this chip, and spent the rest of the day cleaning. . . . so if this had lasted through that, I would have thought it was some voodoo sh*t for sure.

As we speak, I’m wearing the Formula X base and top coat with and OPI polish, and I did it the way I usually paint my nails, and I’m on day 3 without even a sign of tip wear. That’s pretty amazing.

My final verdict is this: If you need a whole new set of top and base coat, go for the system. The polish on it’s own is a beautiful formula so if you like a color go for it, but at the very least if nothing else try to the topcoat. Well played Sephora.