Jessica Nail Colours: Purple Essence, Solar Eclipse & Hologram Top Coat Comparisons

Above & Below: Jessica Purple Essence is, for all intents and purposes, a lovely medium-toned lavender creme. Under brighter lighting (below), you can see that it also has an opalescent finish. It's marked with an 'O' for the finish description at hello-gorgeous.net, where I purchased them, so I'm assuming that's what it stands for. This is shown using 2 coats.

Below: Jessica Solar Eclipse is shown using 1 coat on each nail other than the middle one, which is 2 coats. As you can see, the coverage is quite good, even with just 1 coat. I would classify this as an Indigo blue shade, falling somewhere between a Navy blue and a Royal blue. Disregard the mess on my middle finger's cuticle! My dog decided to jump on my lap when I was applying the second coat!

Below: Yesterday I gave you a brief look at Jessica's Hologram Top Coat in silver (they also make a gold), and I wanted to show you a comparison of some similar top coats. Jessica's is on my index finger, China Glaze Fairy Dust is on my middle finger, INM's Northern Lights (silver) is on my ring finger, and China Glaze Golden Enchantment is on my pinkie finger.

Below: The players in the comparison game, L-R: Jessica Hologram Top Coat in silver, China Glaze Fairy Dust, INM Northern Lights (silver), China Glaze Golden Enchantment. As you can see, Jessica's and INM's are the type where the particles settle at the bottom, whereas the China Glaze Products stay relatively mixed throughout and don't require as much bottle shaking.

Continuing our look at Jessica Custom Nail Colour polishes, today I have 2 more shades to share with you, Purple Essence and Solar Eclipse. As I mentioned yesterday, these are my first Jessica polishes, and I have been quite impressed with them. Their formula is excellent, and 2 coats gives perfect coverage on the 4 shades I've tried so far. There is a bit of streaking on the first coat, but a second coat evens everything out and gives a complete opaque look. It's just the right consistency, flowing nicely and drying quickly to a very high shine. I'm showing you Solar Eclipse using just one coat on each nail except the middle one, which is two coats, so you can see what I'm talking about with regard to how well this brand applies. Creme-type finishes are not my favorite...I love how they look, but I find them tricky to apply without using multiple (more than 2) coats. I was pleased to find that both Solar Eclipse and Purple Essence eased my fear of cremes with their flawless application.

One of my readers mentioned yesterday that Jessica's Hologram Top Coat reminded her of China Glaze's Fairy Dust or INM's Northern Lights, so I compared those 3, as well as China Glaze's Golden Enchantment. I'll stick by what I said yesterday: Jessica's Silver Hologram top coat is the best I've ever used. I applied one coat of 4 various hologram top coats, and Jessica's seems to have quite a bit more 'sprinkles' than the others, although China Glaze came in as a close second. Jessica's also seems to reflect more light, giving the 'sprinkles' a more vivid or intense coloring.