Matte Top Coats - Hard Candy & Julep

This matte polish craze has been going strong all year. Yet I've been struggling with getting a nice look from my original bottle of Hard Candy's "Matte-ly In Love" without smudging, chipping or otherwise missing portions.

I decided to try a matte top coat from Sephora. The one they had was by Julep. Since I already had a few Julep polishes from subscription boxes, and since I needed a few more dollars to hit the $25 get-free-samples-etc minimum on Sephora, I decided to grab this.

The Julep top coat is shown on my middle finger. And the Hard Candy on the ring finger.

Julep smudged the design (which has been dry for 24hrs)

Hard Candy didn't...which is strange because usually it does.

I've read it's a good idea to put a regular top coat over your stamped designs before putting a matte coat on. I didn't do that. So it's to be expected that both of these would smudge.

Since I began writing the draft of this post Thursday I've done two more manicures with this matte top coat, one with ORLY's "Liquid Vinyl" and the one shown below with chevron guides and the ORLY color "Decoded" (a clearance buy at Sally's today). All of the flaws in the below image are my fault, not the Julep polish. I was up and down a bit more than I should have been and hasty with the application.

I've determined the Julep does a nice job matte-ifying polish with one coat. Overall I'm pleased with the effect.