Picture Polish Revolution

Last year, when essence's Ready For Boarding Peel Off Base Coat came out on the shelves, I was lucky enough to get a bottle before they run out within the day. From that day on I haven't looked back and have used it for all my glitter manis and, lately, I've been using it every time I put polish on as the smell of acetone was starting to put me off. I could keep going on about how good it is but this is a post to review Picture Polish Revolution.

I was actually a bit undecided as to whether or not to post this. After trying Revolution as a base coat for glitter, I couldn't help to compare it to the PVA base coat and the difference was enormous and not in a good way either...

If you haven't seen the bottle a million times on the blogsphere, here's a picture.

Revolution promises to ease the process of removal of glitter manicures. The Picture Polish website recommends soaking the polish for 15 seconds, removing what you can and continue the process until you are done.

I decided to put it to the test with a mani that I would normally wear with PVA glue as a base coat. First, I applied two coats of Revolution, which dried within 30 seconds per coat, then applied American Apparel's Office as the colour base, followed by three coats of Nails Inc's Emerald, a beautiful, foil glitter, and finished it with a coat of Seche Vite.

Not my best mani but it looked really good from afar. :)  I wore it for a day to see how it would hold up. As you can see on my index finger, there was a tiny chip after about 24 hours. I'm not sure if this had to do with my application, the terrible shrinkage I got on the glitter polish from using Seche Vite or from the base coat. Either way, it's something to note.  Two things that put me off were the curling that popped up when I tried to clean up Office and the residue on my cuticles, which I had to pull off with my fingers and made the edges pretty untidy.

Now, the removal. I haven't used acetone in a while so I was hoping this would work quickly. I used a quarter of a cotton pad and worked finger by finger. I applied the pad for 15 seconds at the time to see how it would work.  

First try, nothing came off. Time to keep pressing that pad onto my finger. Waiting... Finger stretch... Waiting...

After a few tries, very little came off. Maybe I put it to a very harsh, five-coats-of-a-mani test. I then read on the Picture Polish website that you need to give it a bit of a scrub. Mine was a tough scrub and there was glitter coming off in small chunks that went everywhere. 

This is what my hand looked like after I finished and gave it a final swab with a clean  pad soaked in acetone. Excuse the yellow nails...

There was a lot of base coat residue left on my cuticles as well as glitter stuck to my fingers. It took me about 10 minutes in total to remove all the glitter, including the stuff on my skin. 

From my understanding and reading the ingredients on the bottle, Revolution forms a plastic base on your nails that dissolves a lot quicker with polish remover compared to you polish alone. I see this would be an option if you want your glitter mani to last longer than by using PVA glue as a base. I really can't find any other reason to use it... As I change my polish every two to three days, I wouldn't use it for that purpose. Quicker than removing it with the foil method? Yes. Tidier? Maybe not for me. Would I use it again for glitter? Very unlikely. I'm sticking  to my essence PVA coat.

After all this whinging, I must admit, if you haven't seen this post, I got Revolution to use as a top coat for foils. I have used it for that purpose and it works really well. I felt like I needed to post about its original purpose before I moved on to better things.

Do you guys own Revolution? Have you found it to be amazing or would you give it a miss? Any other methods you have for the removal of glitter? I'd really love to hear what you think about this product.

Till next time, 

Laura