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?

 

 

Essence Peel Off Base Coat

When I saw this mentioned online recently I knew I had to try it.  No matter how well the tinfoil trick works it's still a total pain to remove glitter polish, especially if you have a few layers on.  So the promise of a base coat which allows you to just peel it off when you want rid of it sounded almost too good to be true.

 

 

Unfortunately, Essence isn't available in the UK so I had to get this via a lovely friend in Europe who saw it, thought of me and then posted it over to the UK for me, bless her.

 

 

The base coat looks, and smells, a little bit like PVA glue which didn't come as a great surprise as I've read on a number of blogs online suggesting that using PVA in place of this base coat would do a similar job.

 

The idea behind the base coat is that you apply it to your nails before glitter polish meaning that you can then just peel the whole lot off in a oner when you are bored, saving you the hassle of scrubbing off the glitter like you'd normally have to. 

 

Here's what the packet has to say:

 

 

I decided to try it out under Models Own Emerald City, a gorgeous green glitter which I love but is a pain to remove.  I applied a thick coat of the base coat and then waited for it to dry.  It took a good 10 minutes for it to go fully translucent on my nail.  Once it had dried I applied my usual two coats of polish and a top coat and carried on as usual.

The polish wore well, there was no major lifting or chipping.  I did notice a fair bit of tip wear on the polish after a day or so but that can happen with any base coat and polish combination so I don't think it's specific to the Essence.  I had expected the polish to be ready to peel off very soon but actually it lasted pretty well, after a hot shower I could feel a slight amount of lift around the edge of a few nails but nothing major and no popping off.

When it came time to remove the polish I was fairly hesitant, everything you read tells you NOT to pick nail polish off as it damages your nails - a lesson I have learnt through personal experience more than once - but the Essence base coat requires you to do just that.

It was harder to remove than I expected, I assumed each nail would pop off with no bother at all but some of them did take a bit of picking to get the polish to fully lift so I imagine I could easily have got another couple of days out of the polish if I'd wanted.

Underneath my nails were not damaged at all, the base coat did - at times with a little bit of effort - simple peel off and leave clean un-damaged nails underneath.

I was really impressed with it overall, it's definitely something I will be reaching for again if I want to use thick and hard to remove glitter as it cut the removal time down significantly without cutting down the wear time on the polish similarly.

Part of me does wonder if PVA glue would do exactly the same thing but I am quite happy with my neat little bottle and brush combo from Essence.

Have you tried peel off base coat?  How did you find it?