British Nail Bloggers: Top and Base Coats

Hello!

Some members of the British Nail Blogger Facebook group are doing another group-post today, this time about base and topcoats. So here's my input!

Here are all the polishes I'm going to talk about...

Base Coat: I didn't always use a base coat when I first got into nail-art, I felt like it was an unnecessary step. But because of all the polish use, my nails aren't in great condition, they're a bit stained and they used to bend and break a lot. So I started using Nail Envy after I picked up a bottle cheaply on eBay. I like to think this has begun to really help get my nails back into a better condition, but as well as using Nail Envy, I've also tried to stop picking off my polish, and messing with my nails in general, and taking more care of my hands, so I reckon it's a combination of my own efforts and Nail Envy's powers that are keeping my nails nice and long (touch wood)

Topcoat: My favourite favourite topcoat is Insta-Dri by Sally Hansen. The one in the pic above is about my fifth or sixth bottle. It's only about £6 and easily available in Boots and Superdrug, which is great. And it makes my nails sooo smooth and shiny. And it dries in seconds! All amazing features.
However, I've recently bought myself a bottle of Poshe topcoat, after a recommendation from AJ of Nail Lacquer UK. Her nails always look super-shiny! This bottle literally only came today in the post, so I've not used it yet, but I will let you all know in future posts what I think of it!

I bought a bottle of Seche Vite a while back after seeing it mentioned a lot, and I loved the super shiny finish, but didn't like how it would shrink around the edge of each nail and ruin my manicure- it really frustrated me for the price I'd paid which is why I now stick to Insta Dri.

Also worth a mention but that I forgot to photograph is my recent discovery of Ciate's Speed Coat topcoat. I've only used it once bit I was really impressed with both the drying time and the shiny finish. I don't think I would buy it as I'm guessing it would be pricey, but I'm happy with the mini bottle I have from the advent calendar - it's much better than I expected!
On the right in the picture is the matte topcoat I have, from. Rimmel. To be honest, I rarely use it, but thought it should be allowed to feature in this post about base/topcoats! I much prefer my nails shiny rather than matte, but this topcoat has been really fab the times I have used it to matte-ify my manicures! 



So there we go! I'm also going to use this post to show off my latest feature in Look mag... only realised they'd used my nail-art again when I was flicking through the mag at work! I'm very happy to get my nails used again, but they do pick some random/old manicures... this one I submitted months and months ago, and was very basic compared to some other ones I've sent in! If you want to submit any manicures, the address for it is look.co.uk/nails and they use them on twitter as well as the magazine.