Peel again! PVA glue base coat and nail health for polishista!

An quick experiment to compare my naked nail after peel-off and acetone removal of my birthday nail.

I used this PVA base to carry out the trial by:

1. Polishing nails from the same hand so all nails go through similar wear and tear (control).
2. Clean nail surface with rubbing alcohol on cotton - to remove natural oil and potential dirt/dust on nail, also help to reduce polish bubbling.
3. PVA base on my ring and pinkie fingers followed by normal base coat - to test if PVA base lasts and shield as well as normal base coat. They are normally my least chipped nails, polishes usually last for more than 5 days.
4. Normal base coat (Mavala Barrier-Base coat over butter London Nail Fertilizer) on middle, index and thumb - a control and to test if my nail plate will 'feel' tougher.  I always use base coat to prevent 'yellow nail' stains. Note: Don't put PVA on top of base coat if you plan to peel the polish off, not your nail plate! I made that mistake and ended up with horrible peeled nails for weeks. 
5. Polished and top coated all nails.
6. Wore polish for 2 days. The whole point of peel-off is so I can change polish frequently (Yeah!), there is no point leaving polish on for longer, at least for me.

Before

After

Conclusion:

1. PVA based polish stayed on just as well as the normal base coated.
May have slight shrinkage which may not caused by PVA but more to do with how I applied the polishes and base/top coats.
2. PVA base made no damage (peel, flake) to my natural nail. I made sure to start with healthy nail plates (no crack no peel) this time, which helped.
3. PVA base was easy to remove.
a) Make sure not to coat your cuticle (which make PVA lift off 'prematurely'). b) soak your polished hand in warm water briefly (10 seconds?), push the polish from the cuticle side, lift, soak hand again, lift and peel, easy. Can be part of your shower/baby bathing/dish-washing routine.   

Take home message: Use PVA base on cleaned healthy nails = Easy polish removal for polishista! 

* Polish-ista (like fashionista), -ista is a pejorative suffix, taken together means polish-victim

P.S. 1 Think I am going to keep my Essence Peel-off after all =)

P.S. 2 Check out Labmuffin's troubleshooting if this topic interests you.