Manic.Monday: A glitter girl's little helper - IsaDora Peel Off base

For nail polish lovers and magpies alike there are a lot of amazing sparkling, glittering gem like effects to create these days, all equally eye catching in their own ways. Every time I show a glitter or shimmer polish on the blog, I often hear: "Looks great but is probably really difficult to remove", and it's a very fair and expected comment since a lot of these types of nail polishes often are a complete nightmare to remove, and it'll take nothing less than industrial strength poison to make your nails nice and clean of them. At least that is up until now, Glitter lovers over the world rejoice - we now have peel off base coats to the rescue! The idea behind these base coats which are specifically intended for textured and glitter looks, although you could of course use it for standard nail polishes too, is that when the time comes to change your color you simply lift up the polish along the edge and then peel it off in one go. The first peel off base I heard off was IsaDora's Peel Off Base and since the concept seemed far too good to be true, I obviously had to see for myself if it really could be as easy as this.

In the bottle the formula looks milky white and thick, actually almost gloopy as if you were going to paint your nails with glue, however as you apply it you'll find that the consistency is actually quite thin and easy to spread over the nail. Because of the thin consistency and the wonderful wide brush, you only need a tiny drop for each nail, otherwise you'll notice white build ups along the cuticles as it dries. After about 30 secs the peel off base sets into a finish that is silky smooth to the touch and the fairly opaque white color dries into a much more transparent shade on the nail, which works even under sheer pastel colors. Now your nails are prepped and ready for whichever bejewelled, glittery polish you have in store, and as I tested this base I chose one of my most glittery holographic polishes (that I'll review separately in a few weeks) that looked as if it could be a real challenge to remove.

Since I wanted to see if the peel off element would impact the wear, I didn't use a top coat and on me the holographic effect lasted about 3 days which is pretty normal wear, however I must say that it did feel as if the finish was a little bit more sensitive to everyday wear, and it probably could start to come loose at the edges even sooner than that. When the edges start to come off a little from the nail, you can without any effort at all, simply peel the polish off using your fingers and it'll release from the nail in one big flake, without leaving anything at all on the nail.

As you can see in the photos, the polish has come clean off so need to go back in with another remover to do any corrections and it really couldn't be any easier than this. I am so impressed with how well this works, and even though the peel off base might make the polish a little bit less long wearing - a reason perhaps for not using it under normal nail polishes, it's definitely not a concern for me since it makes removing effect polishes a 1 second job. It can unfortunately be very difficult to get hold of IsaDora in the UK (please, please, PLEASE IsaDora, come to the UK market soon!!!), but there are other brands that do a similar peel off base, e.g. OPI (£11.95), although I personally haven't tried that one yet. If you have tried the OPI version, please let me know what you think about it and if it's as incredible as the one from IsaDora, which should be every glitter girl's little helper.