Science experiment! Nail Pattern Boldness Glitter A-Peel + HK Girl Topcoat

As all polish crazies are plenty well aware, getting glitter off your nails can be a metaphoric and literal pain (seriously, that stuff can etch your nails while scrubbing it off).  To make life easier, some peeps on the interwebs swear by plain elmer's school glue used as a peel-off base coat... while others say that the water-soluble properties of this means it has a tendency to lift off your nails in the shower.  Last year, I picked up a bottle of Nail Pattern Boldness Glitter A-Peel: it's designed to be a quicker-drying base coat than craft glue, solvent-soluble instead of water-soluble, but still with the peel-off ease of shedding glitter painlessly.  I tried it with 3 different types of glitter (big chunky glitter, glitter in crème polish, microglitter topper on regular polish), all with the same results - everything was chipping off in big sheets way less than 24h after I'd painted it on there, and certainly with no help on my part.  Doing its job TOO well = FAIL.

So with the glittery St. Pat's mani this week, I decided to try it again, this time, with my trusty new topcoat.  Plenty of nail bloggers are excited over Glisten & Glow's HK Girl top coat, and I have also had fantastic luck with the stuff - it dries faster than anything else I've tried, and definitely helps extend wear time.  Maybe it could lock the glitter down?

Results?  Sorta.  The last post about that green & glitter mani was with pics taken a little less than 24h after painting.  I made it through a whole work day with only one minor chip on my right hand thumb, so I decided to give it another day, another round of regular dishes and showering and whatever.  Here's what I got:

left hand 2 chips!

After 2 whole days, my left hand's not too bad.  there's a little chip in my ring finger, and a larger one in my thumb, but a couple of those nails are looking fine.

right hand not too hot.

On my (dominant) right hand, though, things are pretty messed up.  Clearly, science experiment was over at this point.

Peel-off base coats are supposed to be removed from the sides or base of the cuticle, never the edge of the nail (you don't want to accidentally create a split in the nail from picking in the wrong layer).  Starting things from a chipped spot began easily enough...

But no guarantees of one-sheet peel-off success.  Though some nails chipped and peeled far too easily, most all of them ultimately required some amount of elbow grease (and definitely acetone) to get everything gone.

final result, prior to acetone

Rating:  2 out of 5 stars.  Glitter A-Peel works great if 2 things are true: you only want to wear your glitter for a day and you have a top coat that works super durably on you.  For a special occasion (New Year's Eve, or Halloween, say?) one-night-only mani, this might be a great choice.  Not so much for everyday wear.

Where to buy:  from the Nail Pattern Boldness etsy store.

~Michelle