Top Coats - Part Three

Purchased By Me

Tonight I have the 3rd installment of my Nail Care Series. We are going to tackle top coats today. As I stated in my other installments, I want to remind everyone these are just my preferences. Everyone reacts differently to products, and I can not promise that everyone will have the same positive experience with these products as I do.

TOP COATS

My Current Favorite combination to date that I use most often is:
 NYC Grand Central Station and Seche Vite.

Grand Central is a pretty impressive fast dry top coat that I apply under my Seche Vite. It is very inexpensive and works perfectly for what I need it to. It can be purchased at most drug stores.

Next is Seche Vite. Now, you may be asking yourself why I use BOTH. Why do I layer NYC Grand Central under my Seche Vite? Reason: Seche Vite is one of those top coats that has crazy behavioral problems. Mainly it causes what is called 'shrinkage'. This doesn't occur in all users, but it does with me.

Shrinkage: When the top coat causes the nail polish below to shrink ,so to speak, and pull away from the nail edges. It's most evident on the free edge (tip of your nail). The best and easiest way to describe it would be: It makes your nails look as if the polish you have on is worn out like tip wear.

Seche Vite is infamous for shrinkage. You can prevent shrinkage by thinning the polish with Restore or you can layer it over another top coat, and that is what I do. It may seem like a waste to use another top coat underneath, but it is very worth it. To date I have not found a better top coat than Seche Vite.

POSITIVES:
 *Self Leveling
(levels everything better than any other top coat)
*Best Shine
*Fastest Drying Time

NEGATIVES:
*Causes Shrinkage
*Needs to be thinned CONSTANTLY

Keep in mind if you would like to use Seche Vite you have to decide if the extra steps are worth it for you, and for me they are. Seche Vite can be purchased at Sally's Beauty Supply.



Next up is Posh. A lot of people that refuse to use Seche Vite tend to use this as an alternative. It does not seem to have the shrinkage problems that Seche Vite has. It is not without its faults as well. To me this tends to be too temperamental for me.  Some times I have great luck with it and others I do not. I have had polishes where it wrinkled the finish completely and I had to start over. It does not dry as fast as Seche Vite and it is not as shiny. The times it does work, it is a nice top coat. I have not decided if I'm going to purchase this again once I finish off this existing bottle.This polish also needs thinner regularly to keep it from getting too thick.  Posh can be purchased at Sally's Beauty Supply.

Next is Good to Go by Essie.  This top coat I LOVE. It does not dry as fast as Seche Vite, but it is very shiny. It does not require the thinning that the two others above do, and it does not cause shrinkage. Unfortunately, it does not have that beautiful self leveling property that Seche Vite has that I really love and think is very important in a top coat. This can be purchased at Walgreens.

(*please note that both the Good to Go and Posh do not have a normal faint pink coloring, this is because I used them on red polishes that caused the discoloration).

The next two polishes I use occasionally, they are both also popular favorites with the nail blogging community. Sally Hansen's Mega Shine and Insta-Dry. Both of these polishes can be purchased in any major drug store. I know many nail bloggers that swear by these two top coats. I like both, but to me they lack the self leveling power, shine, and drying speed that Seche Vite has.

Many will argue that they are better than Seche Vite, so I believe it is a personal preference. I think it's bet to try each, until you find the one that really wows you. 

Another top coat that I use often is Seche Vite UV. There are times when I have ZERO time and need my nails to dry yesterday.  This is when I turn to this.

This can be purchased at Sally Beauty Supply and is an absolute MUST for me at times. This does require the use of a UV LAMP/LIGHT. After applying this I place my hands under the dryer, and in minutes my polish is dried solid. I can be washing dishes and cleaning within 20 minutes or less. I swear by this stuff and if you can afford to purchase a light, this is a must have. I will go into more detail on my light in my last and final installment of this series, so stay tuned for that.

Another must have top coat for me is Glitter Food (aka Fix a Flat) by Nail Pattern Boldness. Glitter Food can be purchased HERE. This is a must for the glitter junkies out there like myself.  If you want a really smooth finish to a normally bumpy glitter... this is this answer. I apply one or two coats of this and then finish it off with Seche Vite. The reason I finish it off with Seche Vite is Glitter Food does dry matte, so add your favorite top coat to bring back the shine. I have had the bumpiest of all glitters feel smooth as glass after applying this.

Last in my arsenal of must have top coats is MATTE top coat. Everyone should own at least one of these. I have tried both China Glaze Matte Magic and Hard Candy's matte top coat.

I prefer, by far, Hard Candy's. It applies much easier for me and is much more affordable. Unfortunately, Hard Candy just discontinued this when they introduced their new line recently. It was pretty heart breaking for me because I will have to search for a new brand. I was smart enough to raid my local Walmarts and collect up as many as I could find before Hard Candy switched over to the new line.

These should last me for awhile. I will have to face it eventually, just not any time soon :)

I hope the following information was helpful. If you have any questions or comments please leave them below and I will address them as soon as I can! Thanks for visiting.

Purchased By Me

Base Coats - Part Two

Welcome back to my mini series of nail care. Part One - Cuticle Care can be found HERE. Tonight we are moving on to Part Two of the series...

BASE COATS 

I would like to mention before I get started, that base coats vary greatly from person to person. Some base coats can work wonders for certain people and others hate that same base coat. Each individual has different body chemistry so I can't promise what works wonderful for me will do the same for you. I had to go through a lot of different brands of base coats before I found the ones that worked best for me.

MY FAVORITE GO TO BASE COAT COMBINATIONS: 

I wear a ton of glitter polishes, so having a decent base coat is very important to me. My favorite and top choice is Barrielle Camouflage. This bottle is super old and it now comes in the newer style bottle. It can be purchased at Transdesign in the newer bottle style. This works wonders for me. It goes on very thin and provides a nice sticky type base for me.  It helps to prevent staining as well. I have several polishes that have permanently stained my nails, which is no fun. This works great for anti staining.

I also like Orly Nail Armor, which can be purchased at Sally's Beauty Supply.
This is much thicker, but also works wonderful.  What I love about using this as a base is that it has a Ridgefiller built right in.  I have had really good results using this as a base coat.

Finally, is Barrielle Hydrating Ridge Filler. This can also be found on Transdesign as well. This is a nice hydrating base coat. I do get dry brittle nails some times, and this helps prevent that. This is much thinner then Nail Armour.

I also like to venture out...

When I want a less thick base coat for a simple solid creme polish, non glitter polish, I use Essie Feed Me. I really do like this one. You can purchase this is Walgreens and other places that carry Essie.  I usually use the next four bases for non glitter polishes

Essie Sensitivity Base Coat.  This is a mini bottle size. Another favorite here.

Poshe treatment base coat. I use this if my nails start to peel or show signs of breaking. This saves a step if you are wanting to treat your nails as well as apply a base coat.

Finally, Posh antimicrobial Base Coat.This prevents fungus on the nail. now granted I never got a fungus from a manicure...but anything that prevents fungus works in my germaphobe world lol.

I have tried many other base coats as well, but so far I stick with these. Variety is important to me. In no means do you have to own all these base coats in order to get a good manicure. Some people like to just use one kind for everything. I have not had luck that way. I do suggest you do use some sort of base coat. A lot of people skip this step but it really does help protect your nails. Especially if you are changing polish often like myself.

Here are some examples of combinations...

A glitter: Barrielle Camo, Nail Armour or Barielle Hydrating Ridge Filler.

A smooth creme: Essie Feed Me, Essie Sensitivity Base coat, Poshe Anticmicrobial

When nails feel week and and start to break and peel: Poshe Treatment base coat, Feed Me

 One of the only bases I plan to add in the future is an aqua base. This is supposedly excellent for all hologrphic polishes. I am not sure which brand I will go with yet on this. Once I decide, I will edit this post to include it.

Thanks for reading guys and stay tuned for Part Three on Top Coats, coming soon!

Cuticle Care - Part One

Due to popular demand, I will be doing a small series on my nail care routine. I get a lot of questions about how I take care of my nails and what products I use, etc. so this post will hopefully answer a lot of your questions. I did a post similar to this when I first started this blog, but it is now very outdated. At lot has stayed the same and a lot has changed. Since my routine and products are bit extensive, I'm going to break this post up into 4 Parts..

• Cuticle Care - Part One
• Base Coats - Part Two
• Top Coats - Part Three
• MISC - Part Four

 First up is ...

Cuticle Care  - PART ONE

 
I always start my cuticle care with cuticle remover. I let the remover sit on my cuticle area for a minute or two, and then I push back my cuticles (very gently) with a cuticle pusher. I use CND Cuticle Away as my cuticle remover. I like this particular remover because it is very gentle on my cuticles. I have very sensitive skin and any other remover I have tried turns my skin around my cuticles red and puffy, CND does not. I purchased this from Transdesign, but I do not believe they carry it any longer. I will have to find a new source myself once I run out. I can tell you that this bottle shown below is 3 years old. I use very little. 

Here are the tools I use to push back my cuticles and trim hang nails once the remover has sat on my fingers for one to two minutes.

The cuticle 'pusher' pictured on the left was also purchased at Transdesign. I love this pusher because of the hook end which comes in handy for cleaning under the nail. The cuticle clippers show on the right are from Sally Hansen and can be purchased at any Drug Store. I only use the clippers to clip hang nails. I never EVER NEVER clip my cuticles. I have tested this out and my cuticles will grow back harder and more fierce if I clip them. The skin gets tough and unmanageable. It may look neat and clean when you first do it, but in the long run it is not worth it. Once I started using remover and a pusher, my cuticles grew very little and were much more manageable and pliable.

I always sanitize my tools prior to use. I'm a HUGE germaphobe, but when doing anything to your cuticles you should always use clean tools. I purchased Mar-v-cide cleaning solution and a container from Sally's Beauty Supply for cleaning my tools. You just dip them in the solution for 10 minutes, and then they are ready to use.

After I 'push' the cuticles with the scoop end of the pusher, I end up with a lot of remover and dead skin on my fingertips. I head to the sink and do some scrubbing. 

My scrubber of choice is California Mango Buff. This scrub is gentle and cleans things up really nicely and I love the smell of it too. It gets rid of the cuticle remover and dead skin very well. I purchased this at Sally's Beauty Supply. You can use any kind of hand scrub for this step.

I then move on to disinfecting. YES, disinfecting AGAIN. This is what germaphobes do lol. I spray my fingers with disinfecting spray, Sea Breeze. If you have ever went to a professional nail salon they would have sprayed your hands with this after cleaning your cuticles. I was thrilled to find out that Sally's Beauty Supply carries this as well.  I love the smell of this stuff and it makes me feel confident that if I pushed any dirt, germs etc under my cuticles, I will not get any weird infections. In my mind, my fingers will get infected and fall off otherwise, of course :) 

My final step is to apply cuticle oil and lotion. I first apply the cuticle oil and then I seal it in with the lotion on top.

My choice items are Barielle Intensive Nail Renewal Oil and Burt's Bees Lemon Butter Cuticle Creme. In the 3 years I have been doing my own nails I have tried CRAZY amounts of Oils and Cremes. I have tried every one available on the market, and these two work best for me. The oil is very light and not too greasy and the butter seals things in very nicely. My cuticles have improved 100% since I started using this combination.

This is something you do have to experiment with. Everyone's skin chemistry is different and will react differently to varies products. A lot of oils were extremely greasy and actually drying out my cuticles and making them very hard. It took me a while to find my winning combination. I wish I could say this combination will work for everyone, but I'm afraid you will have to experiment on this part.

I hope this is helpful. After I let the oil and lotion sit for awhile I will go wash my hands and move on to applying a base coat...

Stay tuned for Base Coats - Part 2 coming soon!

Sally's Beauty Supply HandsDown Ultra Polish Pad Remover Review

I was at Sally's Beauty Supply, (as usual lol), and I saw these nail polish remover pads that really caught my interest. They are called HandsDown Ultra Nail & Cosmetic Pads. Below is a picture of the bag that caught my attention while I was shopping around the store...

Below is a close up of the pad, and the proper way to hold it...

Below is a close up of the flat portion of the pad and it's made out of felt.

As soon as I got home, I gave these a hot and I LOVED them. I can't rave about these enough. There are so many benefits to these nail polish remover pads.

* The pads protect the skin on your index finger and thumb when removing nail polish on your other fingers. The tab protects your skin from soaking up remover. My fingers have been known to turn ashy and white from over use of acetone nail polish remover when removing my polish.

* The pads protect your existing manicure when you are removing old polish from your toes OR if you are doing a manicure for a friend and you do not want to ruin your own polish. 

* When you are doing your own manicure, sometimes you mess up a nail and have to start over on just that one nail.  This will protect your polish on your other fingers when you need to do individual spot nail polish removal.

* The surface is felt and almost 100% lint free.  In the Nail Polish word, felt is used to remove difficult polishes such as glitter polishes. The quality of this felt is WAY better than any felt pieces I have purchased at craft stores.

* The pad felt is very thick and very absorbent. You can clean all ten nails with just one pad and package contains 60 pads.

* You can use these for facial products, without getting hand germs on your skin etc. I get a lot of eye infections and I am very cautious how often my fingers actually touch my face and eye area. I much rather use these to apply facial products then risking another eye infection. 

I am sure there are many many more benefits that I have not listed here. Add to comments if I missed any :) 

Thanks for visiting!

Video on Nail supplies I use for a Manicure and NOTD!

Hello,

I'm back so soon lol. I decided to update my nail supplies I use when I do a manicure. Once I started pulling out the items I realized I had a ton and this post would have been 10 pages long lol. 

Instead I did a video on all my supplies I use - so much easier and easy to get threw:

PART ONE

PART TWO

Hope you guys enjoy these video and let me know if you wanna see more.  If you are using something that I have not mentioned, would love to know what it is! 

Thanks for visiting.

My top 10 Favorite Must Have Items

Hello all. I hope everyone is having a lovely day!

Today I'm going to review some of my favorite products.  We all have a special list of special nail products that we can't seem to live without. Please keep in mind that the items listed here are in my experience and opinion only. I'm not affiliated with any of these companies.  Each person has a specific body chemistry and each of us will have different reactions to different products.  It's best to test all your options and eventually your favorites will stand above the rest, here are mine...

(remember to click pictures if you would like to see it closer up)

1. Mar-v-cide for disinfecting.  Okay I admit I'm a germaphobe BIG TIME!! Kinda of like Howie Mandel but sometime even worse lol :) This is probably one of the main reasons I stop going to have professional manicures to begin with, and why I now do this all myself.  My Last manicure the manicurist cut me (clipping my cuticles) and I was deathly afraid I would get an infection and lose my finger :p Yup, it was going to get green and fugly and just fall off - I was sure of it hahaha! I picked up both these items at Sally's Beauty Supply.  I soak all my tools up to 25 minutes prior to using them and I do soak them after using them as well.  I even soak my glass nail file (which you will see  later on in this post).

2. My Cuticle removers.  One thing I have learned along this journey of doing my own nails is that cutting your cuticles is not the greatest of all things.  It does provide a quick fix, and I think this is why Salons practice it so much.  You come in with frazzled cuticles and leave looking perfect.  What you don't realize is the more you cut, the tougher and more the cuticle grows, so overall it's not a good fix.  I only use cuticle removers, and I get much better results then when cuticle trimming was doing for me.  Most important, NO MORE CUTS! Now there is less of a chance for the fugly green finger incident I so badly fear :) My favs are CND clear Cuticle Remover and my NEW fav is CUTIQUE from Orly. This works great for during the middle of a mani when you can't push back as much.  The cuticle just melts away and I'm loving it!

3. My Cuticle Pusher.  Without this my cuticles would look frazzled and crazy.  I picked this little beauty up at transdesign.com and it was only $2.50 USD.  I was using an older one that came in one of those cheapy all in one tool kits and the difference is unreal.  I would have thrown my old one out long ago if I knew what a difference this one would make! Cuticles watch out, this baby packs a serious punch and knocks cuticles right out.  The pointed edge is great for getting the yuckies that collect under the nail.

4. Nail Treatments - Spinach for the nails.  Here are the two products that I rotate between.  Barielle Nail Rebuilding Protein and Barielle Growth Activator for Natural Nails.  I like to always have a treatment of some type under my basecoat and this help keep my nails strong and free of peelies.  Peelies have to be my worst problem and I continue to experiment with new treatments, but for now these are the winners!

5. Basecoats.  I have tried many of these including Sally Nail Quencher that seems to be a favorite among many.  Unfortunately the NQ discolored my nails and dried them out very badly.  I know that seems odd but each of us has a different body chemistry and every product reacts differently on different people.  Here are my favorite ones so far....

6. Top Coats. I am also in experimental stages with this but here are my winners for this category.  This is the best combination I have found so far.  I do not get shrinkage (when polish pulls away from the free edges and shrinks so to speak).  I put on one layer of Sally Hansen Mega Shine and Top it with my Poshe.  Sometimes I leave out the Poshe and just use the Megashine and get great results.   

7. A Good Glass file! This is really important.  A Glass/Crystal file should be your new best friend.  I find that I get the least amount of Splits and problems when I use this versus your traditional emery board or metal file. I also only file in one direction, and so far so good. 

8, 9 and 10. Cuticle Cream: Lemony Flutter Cuticle Butter, Mango Mend and CND SolarBalm.  These are all my favorites, I can't decide on just one lol.  To me they all work equally well for my skin. I love rubbing these on my nails and cuticles throughout the day.  I actual alternate between them all.  It's like shampoo for me.  Once you use a product over and over it stops working, and it's good to switch off to something else and then go back.  The products work better this way.  

11. (I went over 10 - ooops lol) Is Polish Thinner.  I use these often, more often then most I'm sure. I use the Poshe formula to thin my Poshe Topcoat when it starts to get thick.  I also thin most of my nail polishes that I use. For whatever reason I tend to like my polish formulas thin.  I rather thin and do more coats then globby and thick single coats. Also, thinner can save an old thick nail polish.

Well that's it.  Phew - a lot huh? lol.  Well these are my Must haves.  If you have must haves that I haven't list please add them down in the comments section.  I will try them out as well and let you know what I think. 

Thanks for visiting