Nail Care Series! Part 3- Base Coats

Hello everyone! Today I have part three of my nail care series for you all!

Base coats! These little guys are essential, but there are ups and downs to some of them! Keep reading to find out what I think of these base coats!

Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Base Coat

As we all know, Sally Hansen makes about fifty-thousand different base and topcoats. The Hard as Nails base coat is the one I ended up with! I actually really like this base coat. In fact, I have two! This base helps prevent splitting, chipping, and cracking. It also hardens your nails, which is one thing that I really like about this product. Sometimes my nails feel quite thin and brittle, so I slap a coat or two on my nails, and they immediately feel stronger. This product can also be used as a top coat, but I prefer to just use it as a base. I have nothing but good to say about this base coat! This product can be purchased at your local Walmart, or online.

Duri Rejuvacote

Two words. Duri. Rejuvacote. I absolutely love this product! A couple months back, some ladies on Instagram had been raving about it, so I thought I would give it a shot! The Duri Cosmetics website says that Rejuvacote will heal and cure your split, cracked and acrylic eaten nails. In a matter of weeks you will enjoy the look and feel of strong, vital, natural nails. I use this before every mani that I do. Although this product looks pink in the bottle, it dries clear after application. This product can also be used as a top coat, but like I said about the previous product, I like to use this one as a base. You can buy this product at Walmart or online for about 15 dollars. Even though it might be a little steep, it is worth every penny!

Essie Grow Stronger

Whenever I first started to take base coats seriously, this is what I used. I love this base! It's like most base coats, strengthening, damage repair and prevention, the usual. I used this until it got gloopy and I couldn't get any product on my brush because it was almost completely empty. As you can see in the bottle, it looks a little milky. The milkiness of this product does transfer onto the nail, but the opacity isn't as strong. I would definitely recommend this product to someone! This can be purchased at Walgreens, CVS, most drugstores, and online. 

OPI Nail Envy

OPI has about 7 or 8 different versions of Nail Envy, but when I purchased this, I just picked up the original version. I love this product, and after about two or three weeks of using this, I could tell a difference in the health of my nails. Like seriously. I had tried various nail treatments, and this product started to make a difference. Just like Grow Stronger, I used this baby up! I literally did everything I could to get the last little bit of product out! Again I say, I would recommend this product to anyone. If you don't like shiny nails, then try the matte version! Go get you some!! This does retail kinda pricey, but you get the bang for your buck! This can be purchased at select salons, Ulta, and online.

Essie All In One 

This was one of the many nail treatments I tried while trying to get my nails healthy. All In One can be a base or top coat, and is a strengthener. I personally have had a bad experience with this product. I used it as a base, and I noticed that every time I used it, my polish would chip faster than normal. This also made my nails worse. My nails were pretty bad, and then they worsened. I was like nooooo!!! I still continued to use it, to see if it was the kind of thing that got worse before it got better, but no, that wasn't the case. Feel free to try this out for yourself, because not everyone has the same results. This can be purchased at drugstores and online.

Another base that I like to use, is PVA glue, a.k.a Elmer's Glue. This is excellent to use under glitter polishes. Remember when you were a kid and you put glue on your hands just so you could peel it off when it dried? Well the same effect happens here. Use a thin base of glue, then use polish and topcoat. Use a cuticle pusher to get under the glue and it pops right off! Click here for an awesome tutorial at Wacky Laki! This method doesn't have to be used for just glitter, it will work with regular polish too! 

Thank you so much for reading this! Stay tuned for next week's part of the series! I'll be talking about my favorite top coats! I hope you enjoyed this post!