Today I am going to be comparing Andrea Fulerton’s Gemstone
Overcoat with the Essence Special Effect Topper in Night In Vegas. They are both
flakies in a clear base that flash green, red, orange and blue.
At first I thought that they were exact dupes for each other, and alike to many other flakie top coats such as Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure, Gosh Rainbow, Essie Shine of the Times and Nubar 2010 and they are! The only difference being the level of coverage given. As you can see in the picture below the Andrea Fulerton polish is much more opaque than the Essence one but they give a very similar effect. I am sure that if you layered two coats of the Essence over your chosen colour it would give the same effect as using the Andrea Fulerton polish. I feel that if you have one of these polishes or any of the other dupes there isn’t much point in getting the other as they are practically the same, you just may need more coats.
The Andrea Fulerton polish is readily available in Superdrug in the UK and online. Essence is not available in England but I believe it is in Ireland as well as most of Europe. You may also be able to purchase it on eBay or get it in a swap. It would definitely be one to pick up if you go somewhere that stocks Essence.
The main difference between these polishes apart from the opacity is the price. The Andrea Fulerton polish costs £4.99 for 5.5ml whereas the Essence polish costs 1,79€ (£1.40 according to today’s exchange rate) for 8ml. This means that for 1ml of Andrea Fulerton you are paying £0.91 and for 1lm of Essence polish £0.17. If you can get your hands on the Essence version, I would suggest getting it over the Andrea Fulerton version purely for the price.
