Categorized: Basecoat

Recently I have been testing out two new nail products from Milani: Smoothé Base Coat and Glossé Top Coat. Does adding an extra “e” to the end of these make them better? Maybe!

Smoothé Base Coat – “A ridge-filling base coat designed to prime your nails for the perfect color application. This formula was created with a combination of Okoumé AE and Botanical Extract of Bamboo to fight ridged weak and aged nails.”

Glossé Top Coat – “A quick drying, high gloss clear coating that accelerates the drying time of nail enamel while also providing sunscreen protection for your manicure.  This product contains UV obsorbers to help protect the color from fading, and acrylic that provides a hard & chip resistant coating for extended wear.”

The base coat goes on milky white and dries pretty quickly to a smooth velvety finish. I like that it dries quickly and it’s a nice base coat. Nothing THAT amazing, but solid and good.

The top coat is where the magic happens.

First off it is ultra-shiny, as shiny as Nubar Diamont or Seche Vite. It is thick, but not as thick as the previously mentioned ones, and it’s easy to apply. It’s also self-leveling, which is a must for me.

As far as dry time, it is very quick, but takes maybe a couple minutes longer to be dry to the touch than Diamont or Seche Vite. But still you can lightly touch it within 3-4 minutes I would say, then it’s fully dry in about 30 minutes. Continue reading »

Just a quick post to say I am on day 4 of the Zoya Color-Lock System and am very impressed. I do have two very small chips and some tip wear now, but this is the longest I have ever in my life worn a color before! To be honest I am kind of dying to remove it and put on a new color since I’m used to changing my color every two days, haha! In all seriousness though, I really like this and can’t wait to try it again on another Zoya color to see if it’s just as good. Oh and I will definitely be trying it on other polish brands also to see if it works with their formulas also!

Ta-ta for now!

So it’s been almost 48 hours since I put on Zoya’s Kalista with the Color-Lock System and it’s going strong! Yesterday I did have to fix a chip, but it was my fault. You see, I was taking down office Halloween decorations and there was lots of peeling off tape on the back of paper skeletons involved. I have been typing away like a mad woman at work all day and not any noticeable tip wear either! Could this be it Ladies & Gents? Could it be, I have fallen in love…with a top/base coat? If you didn’t catch it, I was mocking that extremely annoying Sprint cell phone ad when the girl falls in love with a phone (I watch a lot of TV). Lame. Anyhoo, stay tuned for tomorrow’s installment of “Is she in love or isn’t she?” Oh and by the by, I know I am not clutching a polish bottle in the pic. I do love polish, but not enough to carry it around with me to work crazy people. Instead, I am holding my current fav lip gloss by Benefit which is called “Talk To My Agent” and it ROCKS!

Butter LONDON is a brand that is fairly new and I am just recently getting into. I have about 8 or 9 polishes by them and wanted more, so I got three that appealed to me from their website. I really like the whole concept behind Butter LONDON, from their name to the adorable polish names, the colors, the formula, their website, etc. The one thing that I don’t like is their bottle shape! It’s SO hard to open and close the bottle because of the awkward rectangle shape. I totally get that aesthetically, it’s really nice and it’s not like any other polish, but I feel as though it’s just not at all user friendly. It won’t stop me from buying them, however! I also decided to try their basecoat, called Nail Foundation and topcoat, called Hardware, to see if it helps the polish last longer (which I am testing now, day 1). Pics all taken in sun with no topcoat.

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