All Eyes On Her

Turns out that toxic ingredients like toluene, formaldehyde and phthalates actually serve a purpose in nail polish — they help it cure.

I went in to butter LONDON today to trade in three old polishes for three shiny new 3-Free ones, and the clerk painted each of my nails up with a different shade. He applied approximately two thin coats to each digit, and I let them take it easy for a good 10–15 minutes before I went back to running my errands.

When I got home and inspected them, they were all significantly smudged. You may not be able to tell from that fuzzy iPhone pic, but trust me, they’re pretty ugly in person. (But to be fair, I’m a very hands-on person, and polish jobs don’t usually last long on my fingernails.)

I had hoped these new semi-natural polishes would hold up like regular icky ones, because I hate waiting for things to dry. (The long curing time is the main reason I was turned off of the Honeybee Gardens polish collection.) I’ll update as to whether a full and properly cured manicure still smudges…

Okay, perhaps not TOTALLY broke. But with their new Turn In Your Toxins Earth Day deal, I’m totally planning on cashing in six old cruddy nail polishes for two new shiny ones. (I double-checked the site’s fine print, and it looks like each customer can do this 3-for-1 deal twice, for double the fun.)

More than anything, I’m excited to check the place out and get a feel for it. I’ve been wanting to explore their products and treatments ever since I first spotted them in the Sea-Tac Airport terminal, especially since they don’t use any unhygienic water-based treatments. (I’m a bit skeptical about ingredients, because “free of carcinogenic toxins” doesn’t necessarily mean their stuff is free of the zillion other ingredients my skin hates. But it’s a start.) And they’ll do a straight-up polish for just $10, which is nice — I don’t actually enjoy the full-on manicure… not a good service for control freaks such as myself!

Most other natural nail polish brands are sadly pretty worthless — I’ve heard from EDSers that the polish by Honeybee Gardens is a very weird formulations that’s slow to dry and hard to remove, and I’m not a fan AT ALL of those peel-off versions that remind me of fake makeup from back before I was permitted the real thing. So this may be a nice compromise, at least until something better gets developed.

Makeup Alley is a skincare and makeup discussion board similar to the Essential Day Spa Forum, but because I discovered MUA second, I’ve never really participated in their forums.

However, they have a couple of fabulous features that EDS does not — namely, a wishlist function, and a swap function. These two work in conjunction with each other — you place items you’re yearning to try (or just stock up on) on your wishlist, and you also post items you’re happy to get rid of on your swap list. People take a look at your swap list, and offer to trade you for stuff they want and you don’t. And you can search other people’s swap lists for items on your wish list, and try and get them to trade.

Sure, the system has some flaws — many members have complained of “swap-lifters” who receive but never send, and you never know if the item you receive will be in the condition described. But there’s a pretty good system in place for rating users and giving feedback, kind of like eBay. And so far I’ve only had experiences ranging from medium to great — never overtly bad.

A couple times now, I’ve gotten ahold of items I was dying to try, but didn’t want to shell out money for. And my main goal was to pare down my excess surplus of beauty goods, which I’ve definitely been able to do. I’m still getting rid of things all the time, and the shipping cost is usually pretty nominal.

Swaps have been great for me, and I just wish I weren’t so insanely picky — but since certain ingredients always send my skin haywire, I’m fairly conservative about what I’ll swap for. A couple times I’ve just sent users items of mine without asking for anything in exchange, just to put some good swap vibes out there and to see products I never use go to a good home. When you’re as invested in products as I am, it’s nice to see them appreciated!

You do have to create an account to use Makeup Alley for these purposes, but accounts are free and totally private. Nothing but pluses in my book!