PVA glue as a base for glitter polish?

As I was saying yesterday, glitter nail polish can be a total pain to remove, a while back I posted about Essence Peel Off Base Coat which allows you to simply peel off your polish in one coat saving you lots of time, hassle and scrubbing trying to get it off the regular way.

 

I've read that the Essence base coat is very, very similar to PVA glue (which makes sense, after all, who didn't used to paint PVA on your skin and then peel it off in sheets when they were at school?) so I decided to test the theory out for myself.

 

 

 

I bought a 500ml bottle of PVA glue from Poundland and applied two thin coats of it (using the brush from an old nail polish bottle I had lying around) to my bare nails.  As with the Essence base coat you need to wait a good while for it to dry, it could change from a cloudy milky sort of colour to almost totally clear - be patient though, it can take a while!

 

Once it's applied try to keep your hands out of water for as long as possible, obviously you can give them a quick wash if you need to but don't soak them in water or do the dishes and it's recommended that you avoid water altogether for 3 or 4 hours, so maybe do them at night before you go to bed.

 

After the PVA has dried, apply your polish as normal and then get on with life!  When you're ready to remove the polish should peel up in one solid piece without too much coaxing, a bit like this... 

 

 

Sometimes I find the edges are stuck down quite well so I just push gently against the edge of the polish to help pop it off, you can do it with your nail, your teeth or even an orange stick if you are feeling professional.  Once the edge is loosened they should all peel off pretty easily.

 

Leaving you with clean (slightly stained in my case) nails underneath (the staining has nothing to do with the PVA, that's just me being rubbish with base coat and wearing polish 24/7/365).  If you have any residue left then either wash your hands thoroughly or give them a quick swipe with nail polish remover to catch any odd bits left behind.

 

I found the wear time on the PVA base a little less than with Essence, although this might have something to do with me doing the dishes in leaky rubber gloves and therefor soaking my nails.  One nail was ready to peel up and pop off after just a day, the rest would have lasted a good bit longer but after one had gone I had to take them all off. 

 

For me that isn't a major issue, I rarely wear polish for more than a day or two and the PVA would allow me to do that but if you want a longer wear time then it probably pays to be more careful about soaking your nails in water.

 

Overall, I am pretty impressed, it's definitely a much cheaper alternative to the Essence base coat and very effective at removing glitter nail polish in a flash!  Next time I'm going to be more careful about keeping my hands out of water and see if I can get the wear time up to several days.

 

Have you tried PVA as a base?  How did you find it?