Heeere I Come To Save The Daaay!

Don't you hate it when nail polishes get all thick and gloopy? I can't count the number of bottles I've thrown away because they'd gotten old and gone bad. Polishes that I loved, but couldn't use because they were so globby. So into the trash they went, never to been seen again.

So, you can imagine how stupid I felt when I read that nail polishes never go bad*, and that they can be saved by one easy to use miracle product: polish thinner.

Of course, I had to get me some of this wonder of science.

I decided to go with Seche Restore, since I'd heard such good things about Seche Vite top coat (allll the nail polish bloggers rave about it).

Seche Restore is a clear liquid and it has a pretty normal nail polish-y chemical smell (it is, after all, just the solvents that keep polishes flowing smoothly). The product comes in a little bottle, about the same size and shape as a regluar nail polish bottle. The main difference is that Restore doesn't have a brush attached to the cap.

Instead, it comes with a separate eyedropper, which you use to suck up a little of the Restore, and add it--drop by drop--to the nail polish that needs thinning. Then you just roll the bottle (or shake like crazy, if you're not planning on using it for half an hour or so) to incorporate the thinner and the polish. Thinners evaporate pretty quickly, so I try to get in and out with the dropper as fast as I can, so I can get the cap back on the bottle.

Sorry about the weird background. I was, uh, experimenting.

So far, I've thinned about six or seven of my polishes. Some were only slightly thicker than what I consider ideal, so they only took three or four drops. I have one glitter top coat that I think is so pretty, but I couldn't use it because it had thickened to an almost paste-like consistency. Before I added the Restore to it, the bottle was only about a third of the way full of the congealed polish. After thinning it back to a proper consistency, I have almost a full bottle of polish (sweet!). Needless to say, that bottle used more than three or four drops. More like three or four eyedroppers--and the eyedropper holds about twelve drops. So.

I have to say, whether they only needed a little thinning or a whole lot of it, every single polish I thinned out--except one--is now perfect (I wish I had thought to take before/after pics). I accidentally added a little too much thinner to one of my smaller polish bottles, so the polish is really thin now. I've been letting the bottle sit open for fifteen minutes or so whenever I'm up in my room playing with my other polishes, so that the solvents can evaporate a bit and the polish can thicken back up to where I want it.

But other than that (which I can't hold against the Restore, since it was my own fault), it really is an amazing product. I wish, wish, wish I'd known about this stuff years ago. When I think about all the polishes I could still have--some that I just threw out less than a year ago--it makes me want to cry a little.

So yeah. Anyway, I'm totally digging this thinner. When it's used up, I'll probably pick up a bottle of Orly thinner, since Orly's bottle is not only bigger, but it's cheaper too (about $5.00/.5 fl oz of Seche vs. $3.99/2 fl oz. of Orly). I don't see that happening for a while, though, since I've already thinned out all the goopy polishes I had, and I still have half of my Seche left. : )

RCN Ratings:

• Price: 4/5

• Packaging: 4/5 (-1 star because I'm always annoyed by wasteful cardboard packaging--I feel that they could have incorporated the dropper into the cap so that they didn't have to package the two separate items in a box. Plus that way, you'd never have to worry about losing the dropper. Just sayin'.)
• Performance: 5/5

*No, seriously, they don't. Check out this post by Scrangie. This is actually the post that enlightened me as to the existence of thinners. So yeah, a BIG thank you to Scrangie for writing quite possibly one of the most important posts I've ever read. : )