Essie First Base Base Coat and To Dry For Top Coat

I picked these up at Shoppers Drug Mart recently. I've been painting my fingernails quite regularly lately and was in desperate need of both base coat and top coat since I'd been using a thickening, gloopy top coat as both for too long. I thought I'd treat myself and splurge a bit. I paid $11 (CDN$) each for these.

First Base Base Coat: 

Base coats are like the primer when you're painting a wall, a car, a door, a ceiling, a house, etc. It goes on first and acts as a smoothing agent, prepping the surface for paint and protecting the surface. In the case of dark polish colours, nails can yellow from the pigmentation. A base coat will protect your nails from this.

I love the names of both of these products and the packaging is adorable. I love that First Base matches its packaging.

Both base and top coat go on thinly and smoothly and dry quickly. 

To Dry For Polish Drying Top Coat:

The top coat goes on smoothly and does what it says - it dried my polish very quickly. But, is top coat not meant to maintain your polish - keep it from chipping? It just didn't protect the nail colour and I had chipping after a day or so. I will be using this again, perhaps applying more than one coat of top coat but I was shocked how quickly my nail colour began to chip - it was if I hadn't used a top coat at all!

So, a thumb's up for First Base base coat but thumb's down for To Dry For top coat.

C.