It's time for another monthly link-up from the Hobby Polish Bloggers! This month's theme was "New to You," so keep reading to find out more about this theme!
LIQUID LATEX! For those of you who have heard of Liquid Palisade by Kiesque, this is basically a super cheap alternative. For those of you who haven't learned of the wonders of this stuff, let me summarize quickly: you paint liquid latex or Liquid Palisade around your cuticles when doing messy nail art techniques (such as gradients, stamping, water marble) and when you peel it off, the mess comes with it! It's INCREDIBLE! In fact, check out this post from Narmai at PiggieLuv and her comparison between Liquid Palisade and liquid latex. Go on, you know you wanna click it (it has a video, too)! Essentially, I was too cheap to spend $22 on a 10mL tube of Liquid Palisade, so I searched my town high and low for some liquid latex instead. None of the craft stores had any, so I took a gamble and tried at the local adult store and, 'lo and behold, I found some! And not only did I find some, but I only paid about $12 for a jar containing 236mL of product (pictured above). WOW!!! Such a great deal!
I knew I didn't want to work out of the jar every time I used my liquid latex, so I decanted some into a clean empty polish bottle. By the way, this stuff does smell pretty bad - like a mixture of fish oil and ammonia. BLECH! But in the smaller bottle, the smell is not nearly as noticeable as when I open the bigger jar. Yay!
Another nice thing about putting some of the product into a polish bottle is that I don't have to worry about cleaning latex off a brush every time I use it, and this skinny brush is the perfect size for painting around my cuticles!
I like that the liquid latex I found is colored, so that when it dries I can still clearly see where the edge is. This particular liquid latex goes on a bluish-purple color, and as it dries it gets just slightly darker and a bit transparent. The picture above shows it already dried. I tried to snap a picture of it while it was still wet but it really does dry super fast - probably about 30 seconds give or take.
After the liquid latex was COMPLETELY dry, I went ahead and did a simple black-and-white gradient using a makeup sponge. Usually this nail art technique results in a bunch of cleanup afterwards, which (not gonna lie) is one reason I tend to avoid gradients. BUT, with this product, cleanup is so much less work! In the picture above, you can see that I loosened a bit of the liquid latex in preparation of pulling it off.
And BOOM! This is what my nail looked like with zero cleanup after pulling off the liquid latex. Sure, it's not 100% perfect, but SO much better than not using any kind of cuticle protection! One thing I did notice is that if I allowed the polish to dry and then pulled off the liquid latex, the polish kind of flaked off and didn't leave as clean of a line. So I recommend removing the liquid latex as soon as you're done with the polish, much like you would with nail vinyls or striping tape. Before I purchased this liquid latex, I had just been using Elmer's glue from an old polish bottle to protect around my nails (like when I used it for my Mushi-Shi nails). The problems with the Elmer's glue, though, were that: a) it took FOREVER to dry; b) when I went to peel it off, it wouldn't always come off in one piece; and c) since Elmer's glue is water soluble, I couldn't really use it for water marbling without making a big nasty gloopy mess. I have yet to try my liquid latex with water marbling, but when I do I'm thinking it won't be an issue since latex isn't water soluble.
Anyway, this was a really lengthy/wordy post, but I just want you all to understand how happy this product makes me, even though it's only been in my life a short time! Do any of you have experience with Liquid Palisade or liquid latex? Let me know below! And don't forget to check out the "New to You" posts from the other ladies of HPB! Thanks for stopping by!
