Hey, everyone!
This review has been waiting to be written for like a month now and I've just been too busy to write it until today. But it's worth the wait! Today I'm sharing with you my thoughts on Born Pretty Store's Mirror Polish! So keep reading to find out what I thought about it!
This polish has been sweeping the nail art world for the last couple months because it claims to give your nails a mirror-like finish. Pretty awesome, right? Well, I was pretty skeptical, to be honest. So I was excited to be able to choose this polish to review. You can find it here on Born Pretty Store for currently $9.99. Now just to clarify, this price includes two bottles, both containing 15mL of product.
One bottle is labeled as "Top Coat" and one is labeled as "Mirror Nail Polish." PLEASE NOTE that the top coat is, in fact, the base coat. After reading and watching other ladies' reviews I discovered this, since you really don't want to put any top coat on this mirror polish as it ends up just making it look like regular silver chrome polish. From what I can tell, this base coat is an aqua base coat - it has no smell to speak of, is slightly milky-looking in the bottle, and does a great job of creating a super smooth base for your mirror polish. I'll address that more in a moment though.
The bottles themselves are very pretty and very reflective. However they are completely opaque, so it makes it a little tricky to determine the fill line of your bottles. One thing I thought was odd is that the mirror polish is unlike any polish I've ever encountered. It is incredibly thin and evaporates very quickly (it reminded me of laboratory grade acetone), which means it dries almost instantaneously after applying a single swipe onto your nail. It was really bizarre to me, but this enabled me to build up multiple layers very quickly and without having a thick layer of polish at the end. Unfortunately the ingredients are not listed on the bottles or on the website so I can't say exactly what this "polish" contains.
Okay, now I will tell you what I found to be the best application method for me. Many ladies have said that a gel base coat works best for this polish, but I don't use gel so I just worked with what I had. After applying my normal OPI Nail Envy base coat, I applied an opaque black base. This ended up working much like a black base would with a multichrome polish, it simply gave a good opaque base to start with. When that was completely dry, I applied one coat of the "Top Coat" (actually the base coat, but you know what I mean I hope). I allowed that to completely dry before moving on to the next step. Unfortunately, I ended up with a few small bubbles in that base, hence why there are a few imperfections in my swatch pictures. Anyway, when that was completely dry, I applied 3-4 thin coats of the "Mirror Nail Polish" on all my nails. This went very quickly since, like I said before, this polish dries super freaky fast. When I was done, I cleaned up around my nails with acetone and a small brush.
Alright, I'm going to go ahead and tell you the things I dislike about this polish. Firstly, because it is so weirdly thin, it wants to pool in your cuticles BIG TIME. Like, you barely need anything on your brush to get good coverage, and it still wants to go straight for all the little crevices by your nail bed. And if you've ever cleaned up around your nails after applying a chrome/metallic polish, you know this is a pain in the butt. Secondly, if you put any kind of moisturizer on your nails (cuticle oil, lotion, etc.), the reflective quality of this polish will immediately be compromised. It's essentially the same problem as putting a top coat on this polish: it makes it look like a regular silver chrome polish. For someone who moisturizes all the time, this was a bit frustrating. And for my last grievance with this polish, look at the picture below. This is what my nails looked like barely 24 hours after applying this polish! It essentially just rubbed off. With this polish it's pretty much "Damned if you do, damned if you don't" in terms of applying top coat.
Overall, is this polish everything I expected it to be? Well, while it is indeed very mirror-like and super reflective, it really doesn't have a long lifespan once it's on your nails. It's pretty much one of those "I'll wear this for a special occasion" nail polishes. And I mean, come on, everyone needs one of those! Oh, and one other thing I discovered is that the "Top Coat" works amazingly over nail art foils - no shriveling or dulling at all! I'll play around with it more in the future so you can see that, too.
And a gratuitous video to show what it's like in person.
I'm really glad I got the chance to review this product since I was so very curious about it. Have any of you tried this funky nail polish? If you had better results than I did, what did you do differently? Let me know below! As always, use my code below for a discount on your next order from Born Pretty Store. Thanks for stopping by!
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