Saturday, July 27, 2013

Sweet Summer Lemonade, Topcoat Comparison

So I recently made my first purchase at the Born Pretty Store, and if you read the previous post, you saw that I got a round of fruit fimo decals.

At first, I was gonna do watermelon nails, but I decided to use the lemons and make lemonade nails first. I usually HATE yellow, but I really like LAC's Hysteria.





These were really fun to make!

  1. Prep clean as usual, basecoat.
  2. Paint with a white base (I used Sinful Colors' Snow Me White), and then add two coats of your yellow over it. I used LAC's Hysteria, which is a neon jelly, I think. It layers REALLY well. You can find it at Dollar General or online.
For the accents:
  1. While the paint is still wet, sprinkle your glitter over the tip of your accent nails. (I got the glitter I used from the Dollar Tree, but honestly, I saw some that looked the same at Walmart today in the craft aisle.) Run a dry brush over it gently to knock off excess glitter. 
  2. Using a quick dry topcoat, secure the slices of fimo to the nail. Press and hold into place until mostly dry.
  3. Topcoat
For the "regular nails:

  1. Take your white nail polish and create rings of white using a coffee stirring straw. Allow to dry
  2. Apply a thin coat of Hysteria, allow to dry
  3. Create larger rings of white, using a regular straw. Allow to dry.
  4. Apply another thin coat of Hyteria, allow to dry
  5. Using a dotting tool, pen, pin, toothpick, etc, throw on some random dots.
  6. Topcoat
The night before I did these, I received an order from Sally's Beauty Supply, which had a bottle of Seche Vite in it. It's currently on sale! Plus, I have a Sally's membership, AND I had coupons. I got the bottle for about $4.50.

SO I put it up to the test. On my left hand, I used my [new] favorite, NYC's Turbo Dry Top Coat, and on my right, I used the Seche Vite.

Here's my observations:

  • You can't tell the difference, once they're dried. And they dry at about the same rate. They're both very shiny, very hard, very smooth.
  • Seche Vite smells like one of the cheap polishes I won't buy at the dollar store (yes, there are some that I won't buy!). I REALLY found it off-putting, and I did not like it AT ALL.
  • NYC is a little thinner, but it's kinda hard to tell unless you're looking for things to compare
  • So far, neither of them have chipped. In fact, most of those pictures I took about 10 minutes ago.
  • There's a bit more bubbling on the hand with the NYC, but I don't know if it's because of the topcoat or because I was being hasty with letting my lower layers dry. 
    • (Probably me being hasty.)

Honestly, I think LAC's Turbo Dry Topcoat is the winner. For the price I paid (50 cents), it has a much better value. Seche Vite isn't 3-Free either, second ingredient is Toulene.

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