China Glaze Crackle Collection – Cracked Concrete over Lighthouse

China Glaze Cracked Concrete
China Glaze Cracked Concrete

I’m happy to have the China Glaze Cracked Collection to play with–it’s a collection of six different colors of crackle finish polishes.   I was more excited about these than about OPI’s Black Shatter just because there are so many color combinations possible.  I think it might take me a while to work through them since I can’t wear them to work, and I can’t really photograph polishes very well during the work week since it’s so dark by the time I get home.  But, here is the first combination I tried: China Glaze Cracked Concrete over China Glaze Lighthouse.

China Glaze Lighthouse is from the Spring 2011 Anchors Away Collection.  In the bottle it looks like a bright and sparkly yellow, but it’s kind of sheer when you paint it on.  I didn’t initially order it, but then when the pictures of Chanel’s Mimosa started popping up I thought it might be fun to have, to add some yellow sparkle to the Chanel and other summery polishes.  So I included it with my crackle polish order, and picked it for my first crackle combo.  Lighthouse took three coats to be opaque enough to use as a base–I can still still see visible nail line, but with the crackle on top it’s okay.

And lately I’ve liked grey and yellow together, so I picked China Glaze Cracked Concrete to go on top.  I was a little worried about these China Glaze crackles not “shattering” as well as the OPI Black Shatter after reading some reviews, but I was happy with Cracked Concrete and thought that it behaved similarly to Black Shatter.  It’s maybe a little bit thicker, but as long as you’re careful to not glop it on, I think that it will create just as nice a pattern as Black Shatter.  I topped this combo with two coats of China Glaze Fast Forward top coat:

China Glaze Cracked Concrete over Lighthouse
China Glaze Cracked Concrete over Lighthouse
China Glaze Cracked Concrete over Lighthouse, shade
China Glaze Cracked Concrete over Lighthouse, shade

It was hard to get the yellow sparkle in Lighthouse to show up in my pictures–it’s very sparkly, and really shimmers under the grey, more in real life than in these pictures.  I like this combination a lot, it seems a little more sophistocated and textured than the Black Shatter, which is so graphic and stark and grafitti-esque.

On a final crackle/shatter polish note, when i stopped in Ulta yesterday the OPI Texas Collection was right at the front of the store, and then there were about 25 bottles of OPI Black Shatter stuck back in the normal OPI display near the back of the store!  This is the same store that a couple of weeks ago was totally sold out and couldn’t tell me if they would get any more at all.  So reports of Black Shatter being sold out were not true, and it seems that the supply crunch has eased, at least at my Ulta.  It’s also back in stock at Transdesign, so that’s another option.  If you’re still looking for Black Shatter it should be easy to pick up now.

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