Glitter Removal: Which method is best?

Glitter polish.  It's a charm and it's a curse.  Glitter polishes can be so beautiful, fun, unique, and creative, but boy are they a pain to take off!  It's such a pain that many people avoid glitter polish.  I myself have a large collection of glitter polish - 91 of my 275 polishes have glitter in them, which is almost exactly 1/3 of my total polishes!  And yet, aside from swatching them wherein I wear them for only a few minutes, I've been avoiding my glitter polishes lately.  I have tried several different methods of glitter polish removal, with each new method being a tiny bit better and worse than the last.  This post will rank each glitter removal method to help you decide which method is best for you, and which method makes wearing glitter polish worth it the most!

I will be grading each removal method on a 10-point scale, with 10 being the best score and 1 being the worst.  I'll rate each method on its mess factor, the amount of time it takes, how successful the glitter removal is, and I'll list its biggest con and give it a rating for that as well.  Then I'll average out the 4 different categories for an overall score!  The numbers might not make perfect sense, so just to be clear:

Mess factor: 1 = VERY messy, 10 = no mess at all
Time:1 = VERY time consuming, 10 = super speedy
Success:1 = 100% of glitter left on the nail, 10 = 0% of glitter left on the nail
Biggest Con: (description of the con) 1 = terribly unappealing, 10 = super appealing
Overall Score:1/10 = would not do again, 10/10 = will use this method until I die

**Note: no matter the method, glitter always ends up all over my hands and work surface.  Since this happens across the board, I'm not including that in my rating of the mess factor.  Instead, the mess factor is based on amount of trash generated.**

Nail-Aid No-Rub Acetone Power Gel

Mess factor: 2
Time: 3
Success: 4
Biggest Con: Sticky! 4
Overall Score: 3.25/10

I first heard about this stuff from Cutepolish on YouTube.  After seeing her video, I pretty much ran out to Wal-Mart as soon as humanly possible.  Predictably, I have never had as much success using this stuff as Cutepolish does in her video.  In her video, she has maybe a few pieces of glitter left over at the side of her nail when she first rubs the gel off.  I, however, usually still have about two thirds of the glitter left on my nails, even after letting the gel soak for 4 minutes.  So I use the gel again, and it works pretty well the second time.  This makes for a total of 16 minutes of gel-soaked fingers: 8 minutes per hand.  Then, the gel leaves my hands super sticky, and it doesn't just rinse off, so I actually have to scrub at my nails, cuticles, and fingertips with dish soap just to get it all off.  Sometimes, I even have to use the scratchy side of my dish sponge to get rid of the gel!  Oh, and it's so sticky that I also often get chunks of paper towel stuck to my fingertips as well.  Unpleasant. 

The Foil Method

Mess factor: 8
Time: 4
Success: 5
Biggest Con: Dry cuticles. 4
Overall Score: 5.25/10

The instructions for the foil method are a little bit more complicated than the gel.  You cut (or rip, as I prefer) pieces of tin foil, soak a small piece of cotton ball in polish remover, place the cotton on your nail, then wrap the tip of your nail with the foil.  Sit with the foil on your nails for 3-5 minutes, then remove it and in theory the glitter all comes off right away.  In practice? Nope.  About one third of the glitter stays on my nails when I do this method, and I have to scrub the rest of it off manually.  I do have a little bit more success when I use pure acetone rather than a special formula remover like Zoya's Remove+ (which is my remover of choice).  The downside of using pure acetone, of course, is that my cuticles are left super dry after soaking in acetone for 3-5 minutes.  That's not a huge deal breaker since I usually use cuticle balm after removing any nail polish, but it's still probably not great for my skin to get so dry.

Julep Party's Over

Mess factor: 9
Time: 6
Success: 6
Biggest Con: Expensive! 3
Overall Score: 6/10

Recently, I noticed on Julep's website that the Party's Over starter set plus refill kit was on sale for the same price as just the starter set ($28 instead of $38), so I pounced on it!  The starter set comes with ten rubber nail caps and five sets of ten removal pads.  The removal pads are infused with aloe to keep your cuticles moist.  The idea is pretty much the same as the foil method, but a bit simpler since the nail caps can be used dozens of times.  Plus, since the pads come pre-soaked and cut small enough to fit on one nail, that saves some time as well.  When I used these pads, I still had about one third of the glitter still stuck to my nail.  A bit better than the previous methods, but still not as good as I'd hoped!  My biggest problem with Party's Over is the price.  The set that I got makes removing a full, 10-nail manicure cost $2.80, which is the same cost as the starter kit alone.  Buying the same set that I did at full price makes it cost $3.80 per manicure.  The refill kit costs $10, and can remove 5 full manicures, so that's $2 per manicure removed.  No other method of glitter removal costs this much per use!  I can get a whole bag of cotton balls for $3 at the drug store, and a 16-oz bottle of pure acetone for $5 at CVS, for goodness' sake!  (Note: all Julep products cost a little bit less for Julep Mavens, which is a paid subscription.  I'm not a Maven, so the prices reflected are those open for the general public.)

Traditional removal method

Mess factor: 4
Time: 2
Success: 10
Biggest Con: Painful! 3
Overall Score: 4.75/10

Soak a cotton ball with remover, scrub glitter off.  It's that simple.  But is it really simple?  You practically have to dig each individual piece of glitter off of your nails.  It takes forever, and chances are your nail beds will be left in some amount of pain from all the pressure of being scrubbed for 2 minutes.  Technically, it does get all of the glitter off, but it requires much more effort than any of the previous methods.  At least with the other methods, you get to just sit back and watch TV for 3-5 minutes and let 1/3 to 2/3 of the work be done for you in a single swipe!  Sure, you'll eventually get all of the glitter off, but it definitely takes a lot more time, elbow grease, and cotton balls than the other removal methods.

Elmer's Glue peel-off Basecoat  

Mess factor: 10
Time: 10
Success: 10
Biggest Con: No staying power for the manicure! 2
Overall Score: 8/10

Holy super old photo, Batman!

Some time ago, I cleaned out an old polish bottle and filled it with about 2/3 Elmer's School Glue and 1/3 water.  Using this as a base coat allows even the most stubborn of glitters to peel off with ease.  The downside of this is that a task as common as showering and washing my hands often leads to an entire nail of polish sliding off at once!  For this reason, I only use my glue base coat when I'm swatching a polish, with the intention of taking it off right after taking photos of it.  For a manicure that lasts 2 days or longer, this just doesn't cut it.  I know that some commercial brands, like OPI, make a peel-off base coat, but I haven't tried them out.  Hopefully they have better staying power than glue!  If I ever decide to try out one of the professional peel-off base coats, I will most certainly review it on the blog.

Combo! Party's Over + Foil

Mess factor: 8
Time: 6
Success: 8
Biggest Con: Expensive (from Party's Over) 3
Overall Score: 6.25/10

On my right hand, I decided to combine methods.  I soaked cotton ball pieces in acetone, wrapped them in foil, and then stuck the Julep nail caps on top of that.  This was definitely the most successful method!  I got about 80-90% of the glitter off of my nails in one swipe.  And the remaining 10-20% of glitter rubbed off very easily using another cotton ball!  On my ring finger, I used a Party's Over pad instead of acetone, just to compare.  There wasn't too much of a difference compared to the acetone.  Which is pretty cool!  This means that when I run out of Party's Over pads, I won't worry too much about buying more.  For you readers, I'm sure there are some kind of nail caps available outside of Julep.  A quick Google Search shows dozens of different kinds of caps at pretty low prices!  I would guess that this is more successful than the foil method or the Party's Over product alone because of the extra wrapping.  The additional pressure from the tightness of the cap on top of foil really forces the remover under each layer of glitter, and I'm sure it helps to reduce the risk of evaporation as well.

In Conclusion . . .

So, moral of the story?  There really is no be-all, end-all method of glitter removal.  Each method has at least one inherent flaw.  Personally, I'm going to stick with the foil/Julep combo for a while and see how I like that in the long run.  You'll have to see for yourself which method you like the best!

Twisted Colors: We'll Take The Lot Collection!

If you've been following my Facebook page, you'll know how absolutely excited I've been for this collection to be released.  My first purchase from Twisted Colors, Houses and Horcruxes, was inspired by the Houses of Harry Potter.  We'll Take The Lot is inspired by the candies of Harry Potter, and they are all absolutely fantastic!  There's not much else I can say about this collection aside from reviews, so let's just get right to it!

Twisted Colors: P.S. I Enjoy Acid Pops

Acid Pops has actually already been featured in my blog.  I got this collection about two weeks ago, having ordered it about 5 minutes after the collection was released, so I used this awesome neon green as a background for the ghosts on my left hand on the first day of the LPLGlamghouls challenge.

In the Potter universe, acid pops are something of a novelty candy.  They actually have acid in them which can burn a hole through the tongue!  Which brings us to the neon lime-y green of this polish.  I love it!  A holo polish in a green crelly base, with some medium-sized square glitters, PS I Enjoy Acid Pops is super fun.  (There's no acid in this polish - your nails are safe!)  Application is very easy and smooth, and two coats makes for perfect coverage.

The name of this polish comes from the sixth Harry Potter book, when Professor Dumbledore invites Harry to his office via a note.  The phrase is to let Harry know what the password is - for Harry learned early on that Dumbledore's password is often a type of candy.

I heart macros.

Twisted Colors: Alas, Earwax

Alas, Earwax is inspired by Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans - the jelly beans of the wizarding world.  As Ron Weasley tells Harry in the very first book, there are normal flavors like chocolate and coconut, but you also get flavors like liver, grass, and tripe ("George even reckons he ate a bogey-flavored one once!").  In the first book, Dumbledore tells Harry about how he was turned off to the beans when he ate a vomit flavored bean in his youth.  He decides to take one from Harry's bag and - "Alas, earwax!"

Alas, Earwax is an INCREDIBLE glitter bomb.  It's definitely the most dense glitterbomb I've ever owned!  The glitters come in all different shapes, sizes, and colors and are in a clear base.  I have three coats on my nails here.  It's actually a little bit too much for my taste - I think I would prefer one or two coats on top of a creme polish.  (Bet you didn't think that was possible for me!)  I wanted to use a creme base for these swatches, but I couldn't decide on a color!  I'm sure this would look great on top of any color.

Application is fairly tricky, which makes sense based on how dense the glitter is.  Rather than swipe the brush over my nail, I had to dab it on.  I'd place a big drop on the base of my nail, and then sort of dab the brush all around my nail in order to get good coverage.  I highly recommend a peel-off base coat if you use this polish, even if you only use one coat of it.  

RAWR SO MUCH GLITTER!!!!

Twisted Colors: One Good Jump

One Good Jump is inspired by Chocolate Frogs - or, more specifically, their packaging as seen in the movies.  Chocolate frogs are frog-shaped chocolates that have a charm placed on them which actually makes them able to jump around.

Another glitter bomb, this polish has a blue jelly base to match the main color in the candy's packaging.  The glitter colors all come from the packaging - and the chocolate itself!  What else is inspired by the candy?  The polish's smell! That's right, One Good Jump is available with a chocolate scent!  I think this is my first scented polish since I was a little kid.  Surprisingly, the scent doesn't get covered up by a top coat.  I assumed it would, but nope, you can still smell the chocolate even with a normal top coat.

Application of One Good Jump is easier than Alas, Earwax, but it still doesn't spread on as smoothly as Acid Pops or the Houses and Horcruxes collection.  I used sort of a dab-spread motion to get this polish on.  Two coats looks pretty good, but the shade of the jelly and the density of the glitter, as always, look best with three coats.

One awesome thing about this one and Alas, Earwax is that if you smudge your nail when it's still a little bit wet, there's so much glitter going on that you an hardly tell!  I smooshed at least one nail on each hand before I took the pictures for both of these, and I don't see any of that in the photos.  Hooray!

Twisted Colors: Never Loses Its Flavour

Drooble's Best Blowing Gum is the inspiration behind this polish.  It's a bubble gum that lets you blow bubbles that last for days, as well as never losing its flavor - thus the name of the polish.

It is an absolutely beautiful polish!  With an icy-periwinkle blue base and a few different sized glitters, the main feature of Never Loses Its Flavour is the holo glitter.  It is absurdly holographic, and I can't get enough of it!

Application is pretty smooth, though if you want a lot of the larger circle glitters it's a little bit trickier.  But if you're okay with less of the circles, it's very easy to spread on.  The holos are so dense - denser than any of the other holo polishes I own!

Just out of focus enough to see how awesomely holographic it is!

 

I'm super, super happy with this collection.  I love them all, but if I absolutely HAD to pick a favorite, I think I'd go with Never Loses Its Flavour.  Which one is your favorite?  Are any of them totally not your style?  Let me know in the comments!

Zoya Pixie Dust: Liberty plus Some Other Stuff

I mentioned Zoya's Pixie Dust in my post on the eight blue-green-golds, so I figured I'd do a swatch of it!  I, of course, have my Pixie Dust in the brightest blue possible, "Liberty."

Zoya Liberty

Pixie Dust is the most sparkly polish I've seen yet.  It's like having tiny crushed blue diamonds on my nails!  It actually doesn't work well with a top coat, even a shiny one like Out The Door.  A top coat flattens out the texture of the glitters, which mutes the sparkle.

Application is, as always with Zoya, really nice.  Two coats is perfect.

Taken in feeble evening sunlight.

A cool thing about Pixie Dust is how dark the color is, but with the sparkles it's incredibly bright.  I love it and I can't stop staring at my nails!

Taken on my cell phone in the car - don't worry, I was parked!  Direct sunlight.

The best part about the texture of Pixie Dust is that it's very forgiving.  If you miss a spot, if you smear it while it's still wet, or if it chips when dry and you go over it with a few little dabs, you can barely tell!  That makes me really happy because I used my glue basecoat for this, and it chipped a lot sooner than I would have liked.  I dabbed a tiny bit over the chipped spots and you have to really be looking closely at my nails to be able to tell that I patched any chips!

Nail Stains

Liberty stained the CRAP out of my nails.  Really, really blue.  I used this color when I first got it with my usual basecoat, and I don't recall it staining; I think that the glue basecoat is just really porous and allows staining.  Maybe in the future I'll try using a coat or two of my usual basecoat on top of the glue and see how that goes.  In any case, I wanted to take this opportunity to share my solution to stained nails, and it's really simple: toothpaste!

"*gasp* I'm naked!!" - My nails

I can't remember where online I read or heard this, but somewhere out there somebody recommended using normal toothpaste to get rid of polish stains on nails.  I wanted to try it out, but I don't own a nail brush.  I DO, however, have like 5 extra toothbrushes laying around, so I grabbed a fresh one and used that to scrub away my nail stains.  And it totally worked!  These stains were really bad, and they were on all ten nails, so it took a good 10-15 minutes to work the stains away.  But that's a heck of a lot better than waiting two months for the stains to grow out, feeling sad and embarrassed about my naked nails in the mean time!

I trimmed and filed my nails a bit before taking this after photo.  Toothpaste didn't make my nails shorter!

The glue basecoat didn't work very well with Liberty, anyway.  Rather than pop off in one big piece, it flaked off only with the use of an orangewood stick dipped in acetone.  I ended up removing it the usual way - the Deborah Lippman method - and it was still a struggle, but it worked better and faster than scraping it all off.

I painted my toe nails!

Sandal season is coming to an end, and I wanted to send it off with a bang by painting my toe nails to match my favorite pair of sandals ever.

When I saw these gladiator-style sandals in the store with my mom, I was like "Haha, those are CRAZY, I just have to try them on!"  The moment I zipped them up (the zippers have little tassels on them!), Mom and I were totally baffled at how awesome they were.  Isn't it awesome how sometimes you can think something is way outside your style comfort zone, only to turn around and completely adore it within moments?

Anyway, five years later, I'm looking for a gold metallic nail polish and I find "Gladiator" by Nina Ultra Pro.  It's a great brassy-gold, and since it's called Gladiator, I wanted to wear it to match my gladiator sandals.  It's also a really nice way to transition into fall, since it's not super bright but not quite as deep as most fall colors.

Twisted Colors: Houses and Horcruxes

Any of my readers who know me personally know how much I love Harry Potter.  Readers who don't know me personally shouldn't be surprised; it's hard to find a person in the Millennial Generation who doesn't totally love the books and/or the movies.  The series pretty much shapes and defines our generation.  I could go on and on about the books, buuuut that's not exactly the point of this blog, is it?

No, the point of this blog is nail polish.  So, how does one relate Harry Potter to nail polish?  By creating a series of nail polishes inspired by things relating to the series, of course!  And that's exactly what indie nail polish maker Twisted Colors has done!  Here is a link to the Houses and Horcruxes collection.

Twisted Colors is my very first indie polish, and so far it's my only.  I plan on buying her next Potter-themed collection, which is inspired by the candies of Harry Potter, the moment she releases it.  She's posted two sneak-peaks on her Facebook page, and they look absolutely gorgeous!  They're both glitter bombs, and I expect that the other two will be as well.

One more thing, and then I'll get to the swatches.  I have a hell of a time removing glitter polishes.  It's probably the reason I didn't start my blog out by swatching this collection!  So for this, I decided to try out a DYI peel-off basecoat.  (here's the tutorial I used, but there are tons more out there!)  OPI makes a peel-off basecoat, but I wanted to be thrifty and try making my own.  Luckily I had a topcoat that I absolutely hated due to its inability to dry, so I used that bottle rather than dump out a color I even sort of liked.  Normally, peeling off nail polish is terrible for your nails, but remember smearing glue all over your hand in elementary school, and then peeling it off after it dried?  That's basically the idea behind a glue basecoat!  It peels safely off of your nails, without ripping up layers of your nail!

To save time, application is a teeny bit tricky for this entire collection.  The brushes are just a little too wide, at least for the shape of my nails.  You know how if you've been painting for a long time without washing your paint brush, it ends up super saturated and it globs on too much paint no matter how much you try to wipe off on the edge of your paint can ?  That's sort of the feeling I get from these brushes.  It's not the worst thing in the world, because at least the nail polish formula isn't thick and globby.  So it spreads well, but you just have to be careful with the brush.  The glitters don't cling to the brush too much, nor do they glob up on the nail.  

Anyway, enough rambling.  Let's get to swatching!

Twisted Colors "The Sword"

The Sword, inspired by the sword and the House of Godric Gryffindor, is a red sheer (is it quite a jelly?  I'm not sure) polish with large gold glitters.  It. is. GORGEOUS.

Three coats for this one.  You could get away with two, and you could build up to four, but I wasn't quite satisfied with two and I didn't think four were quite necessary for me.  The red is the most sheer out of any in this collection - I almost wish they were all this sheer!

Twisted Colors "The Diadem"

The Diadem, inspired by Rowena Ravenclaw's House and Diadem, is a blue creme with a few  different bronze glitters.  (Twisted Colors also offers a version of The Diadem with silver glitters, to match the movies.  For some reason, Warner Brothers decided to swap Ravenclaw's bronze for silver.  I really adore Twisted Colors for offering both versions!)

I did three coats on this one.  Two is perfectly opaque, but as usual, I wanted to get more depth with the layering.

Twisted Colors "The Cup"

The cup, inspired by Helga Hufflepuff's House and Cup, is a yellow creme with many different types of black glitter and some sort-of-subtle sparkly glitters.  I was actually kind of unimpressed by The Cup when I saw it online - mostly because those long, thin bar glitters looked weird to me - but I ended up liking it a lot better on my own nails than in the online photos!

The Cup is a bit harder to apply than the other polishes in this collection.  The glitters tended to fall off the brush when I wiped off excess drips of polish into the bottle.  Or, if they didn't, they would stick to the brush.  It was a little difficult to get a nice distribution of the glitters, but not impossible or even all that frustrating - it just required a little bit more concentration while applying.

You can see lots of air bubbles in this color - that's because of how hard I had to shake the bottle almost between each nail.  The glitters settled more quickly than the other polishes, and since I needed so many extra pieces of glitter on every brush stroke, I had to shake it up a lot. 

Three coats to get the best coverage of glitter; two coats is enough to make it opaque.

Twisted Colors "The Locket" 

 The Locket, inspired by Salazar Slytherin's House and Locket, is a green creme with many shiny silver glitters, and a few black ones.

I have no complaints about this one; the application was as easy as you can get with glitters of this size.  It did photograph a liiiiiittle bit yellower than it is in real life, but all in all this whole collection photographed really well!  

Three coats.  Again, two coats is good and opaque, but three is more fun!

DIY Peel-off Basecoat results

After wearing these polishes over my peel-off basecoats for a few days, they began to chip - even on nails that I remembered to wrap the tips.  This is normally tragic, but in this case it's actually a good sign: chipping polish means it's not adhered to the nail, which is a good thing when your goal is to peel the polish off!  I actually had an entire nail break off in one piece while I was helping my boyfriend's brother move.  

I didn't have my good camera with me - sorry for the cell phone quality!

I found that it was easiest to peel the polish off if my hands were recently soaked in warm water - after a shower or while giving myself a nice, relaxing foot soak.  My nails were totally fine and not super damaged after peeling the polish off!  The yellow of The Cup did stain my nails a little bit, though.  I guess two layers of watered-down glue form less of a protective coat than my usual 3-4 layers of base coats.  The staining isn't too bad, though, so I'll definitely be using my glue basecoat for all glitter polishes and manis from here on out!