Glitter polish.  I love it as much as the next person.  (Actually, I think it’s safe to say that I love it more than the next person, since at any give time there’s a good chance that my husband is the “next person” to me.)  It sure is a bugger to remove, though.  Even when using straight acetone, it can still be a pain to remove completely.  

Then one day, someone somewhere had the brilliant idea of applying a base coat of Elmer’s School Glue on the nails before applying glitter polish so that you could just literally peel the polish of when you were ready to remove it.  When I first heard about this, I just about fell over.  I’m pretty sure that I went out that same day to buy some glue.   

Attempt #1:  I applied a medium-thick coat of glue to my bare nail with a little brush and let it dry completely.  I then applied a few coats of a really dense glitter polish.  It really seemed like everything was going well until I woke up the next morning and found that one of my one of my nails had just fallen off while I was sleeping!  (Well, the nail didn’t actually fall off, but the polish did and it looked just like a press-on nail.)  By the time I was done making breakfast, four more nails had fallen off, so I just easily popped the rest of them off, too.  This all happenbed pre-blog for me, but I actually did take a picture of it at the time:

So, Attempt #1 was a fail.

Attempt #2:  After lamenting about how my beautiful polish just fell off on facebook, someone suggested that I apply a base coat first, then apply the glue, then the polish.  So, that’s what I did.  The good news was that the polish did not fall off.  The bad news was that it was really, really hard to get the polish off without nail polish remover, and I actually did a little damage to the top layer of my nails when I ripped the polish off.  So, Attempt #2 was another fail.

Attempt #3:  Somebody – and I forget who, so if it was you, let me know so that I can give you credit – suggested that I water down the glue before applying it, so that’s what I did.  I mixed together roughly equal parts water and glue and brushed it only my toenails.  Adding the water made it easy to apply a really thin coat of glue.  I let it dry completely and then painted my toes with my currently favorite glitter polish, Funky Fingers – Sand & Stilettos.  Well, the next morning, none of my toenails had fallen off, so that was a good thing.  The polish actually survived 6 days, including a day at the beach until I noticed that the polish had popped off of my middle toenail on my right foot. 

(Yes, I’m fully aware that I have stubby toes, so you don’t need to tell me that in the comments or anything.)  Well, since one of the nails was bare, I decided that I might as well take the polish off the rest of the toes.  I took a little bit of picking around the edges with tweezers, but all of the polish on the little toes came off in one chunk.  The polish on the big toes came off in a 4 or 5 chunks.

In the end, all of the polish came off pretty easily with little to no damage to the nail!

I just gave my toenails a quick wipe-down with some acetone to remove a few stubborn pieces of glitter, but that was all I had to do!  Attempt #3 was a Success!  (And there was much rejoicing, yay.) 

So, I haven’t actually tried the watered down glue on my fingernails yet, and I know they take a lot more abuse than toenails, but someday I will and I’ll let you know how it goes.  And if you give it a try, please let me know how it works for you!