Lustrous Lacquer: Nail Foil

Showing posts with label Nail Foil. Show all posts

Friday, December 9, 2016

Claire's Mood Polish - Flirty and Shy

There's a famous saying that goes "You get what you pay for." And while that is usually true, every once in a while a product comes along and changes all that. Today I will be sharing with you one of those products. Claire's nail polishes are some of the most wallet friendly polishes you can buy and are available in almost every mall across the country. So Imagine my surprise when the 3-year-old bottle of Mood polish my daughter chose for me to wear still shifted colors. And I don't mean just a slight shift during extreme temperature changes, but a very noticeable shift as I was painting my nails!

The formula of Flirty and Shy sadly was not as friendly as it's price tag. My bottle was thin and runny with a lot of streaking no matter how much I tried to remix my bottle. Now this could be a factor of its age and not the original formula, but I guess I won't know that for sure unless I pick up another bottle.

Flirty and Shy dries extremely quickly to a matte finish and for me, the color shift was almost instantaneous. Shown here is 2 coats plus top coat.

For an accent nail, my daughter decided I needed to break out my nail foils and picked the Azurit design from Dollar Nail Art. Of course, if you've used nail foils before you know that a regular top coat ruins the foils, and a water based one is needed. The only water based top coat I've tried is Sprout although Id love to hear your suggestion for a different option. Thanks for stopping by and Happy Polishing!

Friday, October 24, 2014

Lustrous Lacquer 6:00 AM Sprout

Finally a top coat that wont ruin nail foils! Sprout- Raindrop clear

*Nothing to Disclose*

Today I have for you the answer to all your nail foil prayers. Ok well, to be honest, I don't know if that's true, but I did find a top coat that works with nail foils. Finally! You might remember my previous post: My love/hate relationship with nail foils from earlier this year. Sprout Raindrop clear top coat was the answer to my needs.

For this test, I used some nail foils that I picked up at Dollar Nail Art. They are not the easiest to apply, but I'm hoping that I'll get a little more practice now that I've found a way to actually wear them. I'll start out with a picture of the nail foils alone.

And here's a macro shot just in case you want a better look. As you can see I still struggled with getting these applied just right, but I was still able to get good results for the top coat testing.

After applying the foils I added a thin coat of Sprout, making sure to not drag the brush across the surface of the nail. This is not a quick dry top coat and did take about 20 minutes to fully dry for me.

While I still didn't get absolutely perfect results from Sprout it is leaps and bounds better than my traditional top coat that I attempted to use the last time. There is still some slight wrinkling of the foils but it's minimal. This next macro shot makes it seem much worse than it is to the naked eye.

On the left is a nail foil with only Sprout Topcoat applied, on the right is the addition of a quick dry top coat. I wanted to see if the quick dry top coat would still ruin the nail foils after Sprout was applied and also which way would hold up better. The additional top cost also seemed to smooth out any wrinkles in the foils.

Now the real test. How did everything hold up after a day filled with laundry, dishes, and raking leaves?

Well, not as good as a traditional manicure that's for sure. But it was a completely different experience for me than the first time wearing foils. The ring finger held up the best as that was the only one with both top coats on it.

Sprout Raindrop clear didn't turn out to be the miracle product I was hoping it would be, and allow me to wear nail foils for a few days. But it is the only top coat I've used that didn't ruin the foils the minute it touched the nail. And now I can wear nail foils without my nails being a complete disaster after walking out the door. Thanks for stopping by and Happy Polishing!

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Lustrous Lacquer 11:05 AM Nail Foil

My love/hate relationship with Nail Foils

*Nothing to Disclose*

Good morning my fellow lacquer friends. Happy Hump Day! Today's blog post is about my recent experience with nail foils. Oh, how I looked at picture after picture of manicures done with them, Longing to have them on my fingertips. Finally, after a few months, I bit the bullet and purchased a set of them from Dollar Nail Art. My order arrived and I was all excited about them. And then they sat there daunting me, teasing me, daring me to use them. You know the term "you are your own worst critic"? Well, I am my own biggest naysayer and trying something new, especially when I share my attempts with the world scares me a little. It's something that I'm working on so I watched a YouTube video for some tips and jumped right in. I always feel more prepared and indestructible after watching a few videos on how to do something. Anyone else ever feel that way?

So after learning that patience is a virtue once again I finally got my first foil applied successfully. It's not perfect but I loved it!

At first, I was only going to do an accent nail for my manicure but how could I resist a full manicure of this gorgeousness! So with limited time before work I set out to do just that. The end result is a little bit shady as there is a slight learning curve to nail foils but I was determined!

So this is where the love/hate relationship comes in. I love how this looks. ( Have I said that enough in this post?) But I had a few bald spots on my nails that I couldn't fix. Plus you cant top coat them. When I tried to top coat them they got ruined. The foil almost crumpled up on my nails. Here's the kicker. Once you have your foils applied don't move, don't apply lotion, stick your hands in your pockets, wash your hands, or just generally touch anything. If you do this is what you'll end up with.

Nail foils are extremely fragile and delicate. This was just 2 hrs into my shift at work. I felt so embarrassed to have my nails looking like this. I put gloves on just to hide them and that removed them even faster. By the end of my 8 hr shift, there was nothing left of the foils at all.

If anyone has any tips about how to make these last longer I'm all ears. Part of me wonders if a non quick drying top coat would work better but I haven't had time to test this theory yet. I hate to think that I have all these foils that I cant really use. I'd love to hear your thoughts on nail foils or any tips you'd like to share. Thanks for stopping by and Happy Polishing! Also dont forget to check out my 3K giveaway.

*UPDATE*

A few months ago I found a top coat that actually works with nail foils. You can find my post and review here.