FLOATING IN DREAMS

One product many beautyblogs have been raving about is the express nail polish remover by Sephora. What it is, is a little pot with a sponge inside that should make cleaning up polish from your finger nails a breeze. After reading some reviews about this product online I thought I’d give it a shot and see how I like it. I actually love the product on the one hand, but on the other, I don’t. Here’s why.

Sephora Express Nail Polish Remover

As you can see the express remover comes in a little pot. So far so good and this looks like it could be just your average conventional nail polish remover. Here’s what you see when you unscrew the cap:

Sponge inside the pot

Inside this little jar is a sponge soaked in nail polish remover. What you do is, you simply stick your finger in the hole, you hold it or twist it a few times and tadah: your nail polish is gone. It takes off anything, even tough glitter polishes without leaving a trace. As any nail polish user will know: darker, bolder colors and glitters are a pain to take off as you either get the color or glitter all over your hands. Not with this thing and so I was as happy as a kid at Christmas when I found out it actually does what it’s supposed to do.

Here’s the downside though: the nail polish remover that this thing originally came with weakened my nails to the extend that they all started to break like no tomorrow. At first I noticed some weird sort of chipping. It was as if the top layer of my nails was starting to wear off, which had me kind of worried. Here I was after more than a year of putting in true efforts to get my nails healthy after years of nail biting. Finally they were becoming stronger and I used this for a month and snap! That was the end of long nails for me. My nails still haven’t recovered, only a few of them are now growing out long and strong.

So for me, the idea of the product works, it’s just the remover inside that I find horrible. You can imagine my joy when I found the following video (in Dutch) on how to clean it out and replace the remover with your own (also as a refill so you only have to buy the pot once):

This is NOT my video. Source

After watching this, I tried switching out mine and now it works a charm! I just use this really cheap drugstore brand remover which does the job so much better without damaging my nails. The effect of the jar hasn’t changed: I still don’t get nail polish all over my fingers when taking of polish and glitters all stay put in the jar as well. The only thing I did is use very chunky glitters so the sponge got damaged a bit, but the fluff that comes out at times I can easily wipe away.

Final verdict: without the original nail polish remover I say it’s a must have for anyone digging nail polish!

Have you tried this nail polish remover before? Which brand of nail polish remover do you use?