Base and Top Coats - What I'm Using and Why

Hi lovelies,

So, if you are into nail art, or just like painting your nails, I'm sure you'll know by now that having a good base and top coat is really important to having a successful and great manicure. If you still are unconvinced, Michelle over at LabMuffin has written two really, really good posts (top coat and base coat) detailing why they are important.

Now that we've established that base and top coats are really, super important, lets crack on and talk about mine. :)

Top Coat

Surprisingly, I am not a person that swears by Seche Vite, even though it is widely regarded as the best top coat out there. Admittedly, I have never tired this Holy Grail of top coats (partly because I'm afraid that I'll love it so much that all over top coats will appear sub standard...) But, the reason that I have never tried this top coat is because of this scary warning...

Source here.

On the back of this bottle, it reads 'Warning! This product contains a chemical known to the State of California to cause birth defects on other reproductive harm.'

To be honest, that scared the bajeezus out of me (even though I'm not actually at risk as I am not pregnant nor sexually active), but still! This ingredient is toulene, which is one of the Big Three in nail polish manufacturing and things I try to stay away from (with the exception of my OPI Nail Envy). For me, using a product with toulene just wasn't worth it for me - so I set out to find a great, 3-free alternative.

My search led my to discover Poshe, which is a 3-free top coat which advertises itself as being able to dry polish completely in 15 minutes. Intrigued, I ordered a bottle. And..... I never looked back. This is the top coat that I swear by and would recommend to others in a heartbeat. It dries super-fast (I never actually timed it, but I can say it will dry 5 coats of wet polish completely in about 20 minutes - say goodbye to smudges and dents forever!

You do have to be careful when applying it as I have found it can be a little prone to shrinking, so make sure you wrap your tips! And, it does get very thick when you get down to the last 1/6 of the bottle, but that can be remedied by adding some polish thinner.

It's also affordable (or at least, what I call affordable). I get mine on Fishpond, which is a great place for Aussies as most items have free shipping nation wide. Prices vary for Poshe between about $11 and $42, so look around and find a good deal. My most recent purchase of Poshe was this one, which is a great deal as it works out to about $10.75 per bottle (it's $21.48 for two). For me, that's an acceptable price for a good top coat, considering in Australia stores, average prices range from $15-$30. But that's me. My sisters think I'm barmy to spend that amount on nail polish, but hey, each to their own. :)

To be honest, I might be a little biased as this is the only quick dry top coat that I've ever tried. But, I don't have a large amount of disposable income to throw around on a dozen top coats just so I can draw up a handy comparison table and I believe solidly in - 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it'. Poshe works great for me, and I don't really see a reason to change. :)




Base Coat

So, my hunt for a base coat is a little less straight forward. From about November through to the end of February, I had been using OPI's Nail Envy, which I was loving until my nails started breaking. The instructions do say not to use the product for more than a month before giving your nails a break because the formaldahyde (which helps strengthen your nails) can make your nails brittle if used for too long. I disregarded this warning because due to my extremely sweaty and moist hands, I felt that there was no way my nails to going become brittle. And I was right! Until the weather started cooling down again and my hands were a lot less sweaty (although still very gross) and my nails started breaking. A lot...

So, with that base coat out the window for the time being, I needed to find a new one. I tried using Sally Hansen's Double Duty which is a base and top coat, but I found it cause my polish to chip quite fast and I got a lot of staining, which is really unusual because I never get staining. But, that's not to say that Double Duty is not a good product as my mum and Opinionated swear by it. But it didn't work for me.

Luckily, I had recently bought Push and Shove by OPI and it came with a mini bottle of OPI Lay Down That Base. So I decided to give that one a try. It's working pretty well so far. It's not causing any more chips than usual and I am back to my stain free state (yay!). However, I have only been using it for about two weeks, so the jury's still out on that one. While I do think that it is a good base coat, it didn't exactly grip me and say 'wooooooh look at me! I'm a great base coat yahoooo!'. Not that my polish speaks to me or anything..... Price wise, I don't know how it matches up - I haven't got far enough into my sample bottle to decide whether I want to repurchase or not and so I haven't done any research on where I'm going to find the best deal.

Ultimately, I really liked my Nail Envy. It was everything I looked for in a base coat, but unfortunately, it's not working for me at the moment. Price wise, it's not too bad. There are a lot of different versions out there but I went with the Original, and it was costing me between $18 and $25 a bottle, which I didn't think was too bad, considering how much nicer it made my nails look. I have no doubt that in a month or so I will be back using Nail Envy again (but maybe with a little more restraint) but for now, Lay Down That Base is proving to be a pretty good substitute. However, I think I might keep looking.