Udderly Smooth Hand Cream Review

When it comes to hand creams I have a few faves, but I also like to try new brands.  So when I ran out of the AVON cream that I keep at my desk at work I picked up this new stuff at Dollar General.  It’s called Udderly Smooth Hand Cream and it was around $2.50 for a 4 oz. tube.

The tube says it was developed for dairy cows, I’m assuming to care for their udders that are always getting tugged at.  Poor babies’ boobies!!  But I’ll be honest, the fun cow print on the packaging is what motivated me to buy it.

The formula is much more runny than I expected.  When I flipped the cap I squeezed the tube to get some of the product to come out.  Turns out, squeezing isn’t necessary.  It’s very runny, so it oozes right out of the tube on its own.  Initially, I was turned off about how thin it was, but I have gotten used to it.  There’s an emblem on the tube that states NON GREASY, but doesn’t practically every cream say that?  In this case though, it’s true.  It absorbs very fast and doesn’t leave an ooey gooey feeling on my hands.  It feels much more squeaky clean than other lotions.  Also, it has a very mild scent, similar to baby lotion.  I like that although it’s not thick and greasy, it does seem to leave my skin soft and smooth.  So I’d say this stuff works just fine.

Usually I prefer thicker lotions, and I don’t mind a greasy feel since in my head I figure greasy = moisturizing.  But in comparison, Udderly Smooth has a nice light formula.  I’d assume that this could be great for people who dislike greasy formulas.  And could also be good if you wash your hands multiple times a day, and therefor have to re-apply lotion a lot.  This stuff’s convenient since it absorbs fast, has a clean feel to it, and you won’t be leaving moisturized fingerprints all over everything.

So there ya have it!  Udderly Smooth Hand Cream.

Hey, did you notice my nail art at all?  I’ll be posting these pastel peacock nails tomorrow.  See ya then !

UPDATE on May 5, 2014- So I realized that my cream is much runnier than it should be.  I spotted another tube at a pharmacy and I shook it and it felt solid.  Mine is noticeably very runny!  I contacted the company using the email address on their website about 5 days ago.  I haven’t heard back yet but I will let you know if they respond.  I still have my receipt so I might try to exchange the product at Dollar General.  I think the cream is nice, but it’s making a mess since it squirts right out if you open the tube without being really really careful. Not sure what the deal is there!

 

Essence Peel Off Base Coat – Review

I was using my own DIY peel-off base coat for a while.  But when I saw this Essence product in a store while on vacation I just had to grab it since I have a hard time finding essence stuff where I live.  I think this Essence Peel Off Base Coat was only maybe $1.99 if I remember correctly.  Sorry to say, not a fan of this product though.  I don’t think it works well. I’ve tried it twice and didn’t have good luck either time.

First off, before application, your nails must be squeaky clean with no oils on them.  This formula has a tendency to retract and bead up on your nail.  Even with freshly washed hands this happens.  So you may need to wipe your nails with acetone before using Essence Peel Off Base Coat.

One thing I liked is that you can see when it’s dry.  The bottle says to wait ten minutes, but I don’t think it even took that long.  FYI- Essence dried much faster than my diy stuff.

When I first tried it out it took a lot of work to get off.  I used an orange stick and had to pick a lot!  It was not fun.  Second time I had many more layers of glitter so I thought it would work much better- I was guessing the glitter would peel off in one stiff piece.  But it totally didn’t.  I picked so much (and I used my nails this time, not an orange stick) and it was a hassle.  My nails looked crappy and damaged since it was peeling off the surface of my nails.  Also, it didn’t protect them well as you can see in the last pic above- I got wicked stains!  And I didn’t even think that Zoya Zuza was a stainer.

In essence, I would skip this essence product.  White craft glue (elmers) works better!  Plus, there’s a whole bunch of other products on the market you could try.  Lindsay over at NAIL THAT ACCENT just did a great comparison of a few of the top brands of peel-offs.

What kinda peel-off stuff works best for you??

AVON Easy Press Nail Dryer

I recently set up nail station in the downstairs of my house.  I’m so happy to have a dedicated area to paint my nails!  I have my desk all organized but it seemed like I was missing something that could potentially make my station awesome!!!  A nail dryer.  I honestly didn’t even know where to start looking for one, or if there are different kinds, etc.  So when I spotted one in my AVON catalog I had to order it!

The AVON Easy Press Nail Dryer was $9.99 and they had a sale for buy one, get one for 99 cents.  So I ordered 2 of them and it came to $11.  Not bad.  It runs on 2 AA batteries.  Your supposed to put your hand under the dryer and then press down to have it automatically turn on.  I have found that you have to press pretty hard though.  I usually press down with my other hand’s pointer finger… that way I don’t have to press too hard with a wet hand. The fan is not super strong… but for an inexpensive plastic thing, what do you expect?  I like the purple color and the cheap price.  For me, the fact that it runs on batteries is nice since I was looking for something that didn’t have plugs or wires.

Do you have a nail dryer?

Island Girl

Today I’m showing you a couple Island Girl Hawaii products- a blue nail polish called Tropical Magic and a scented cuticle oil.  Heads up- this may be the most beautiful cuticle oil that you’ve ever seen!

But first let’s look at this luscious blue….

Shown here is one coat of Sally Hansen basecoat, two coats of Tropical Magic and one coat of seche vite topcoat.  Like most dark blues it’s almost a one-coater… but you’ll probably need a second coat to cover a few bald spots.  Nice bright blue, huh?!  I love it.

The other Island Girl product that I’ve been coveting lately is this gorgeous lavender scented cuticle oil.  It has real dried flowers in it.  It’s shaped like a nail polish bottle, but a little bigger, and it also has an applicator brush that resembles a standard nail polish brush.  It’s so easy to apply- I love using it after every manicure while I wait for my topcoat to dry.  It’s so pretty with all the bright flowers that it feels like a real treat every time I use it!

Island Girl products are made in the USA and are sold mainly in Hawaii at ABC Stores.  But you may be able to find them elsewhere…I got this stuff when I spotted an ABC Store in Las Vegas.  Or you can view them online at ABC -Island Girl Cosmetics.

Wanna see my other Island Girl post? Green Glitter

Duri Rejuvacote Review (before and after)

Today I’d love to share the results of my 10 day trial of Duri Rejuvacote.  I’m always searching for my next holy grail nail treatment.   Is this the one?  I have before and after pics for you!

My pointy nails have been in pretty good shape lately, but every few weeks I’ll get a break (usually on my right-hand middle finger).  But since my nails are already healthy, I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to see much results from using Duri Rejuvacote.  But I sure did! Good? Bad? Ugly? Keep reading!

What is Duri Rejuvacote?

From Duri’s website:

Rejuvacote “the nail doctor” will heal and cure your split, cracked and acrylic eaten nails. In a matter of weeks you will enjoy the look and feel of strong, vital, natural nails. It’s not a promise, it’s a guarantee.

It takes only 2-3 weeks to see dramatic improvement on your nails when you use Rejuvacote. It will force your nails to grow stronger, healthier and longer.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR USAGE-

Apply Rejuvacote daily over bare natural nails or over nail polish. It is designed to be used as a base coat and a top coat.  The package instructions say the following:  Begin with clean dry nails.  Apply one coat of Rejuvacote as a base coat.  Apply nail color if desired.  Apply Rejuvacote as top coat, daily.  After 7 days, remove with polish remover.  As your nails improve, apply every other day or as needed.

I change my nail color often so this is what I did-  I applied one coat of duri as a base coat, then my nail color, and then some seche vite topcoat like normal.  The next day I would remove all polish and start over with a fresh base coat of Duri.  I repeated this process every day for ten days.   So basically, I applied a fresh base coat of Duri everyday for ten days straight.  I even continued to use the product for another five days after for a total of 16 days (to give it a fair chance).  But for the purposes of this review we will look at results after my ten day trial.  In my opinion, ten days time is realistic and feasible, yet long enough to see results.

MY RESULTS-

I am not happy with the results for three reasons: 1- my nailbeds turned bright pink, 2- my nails started looking bumpy and ridgey, and 3- the tips of my nails starting peeling and breaking.

PINK?  Yes, the skin under my nails looked like it was turning pink!  I did a french mani a few days after usage and my natural nails that poked through looked so funny and bright pink!  Especially my left-hand ring finger.  Look at the ‘AFTER LEFT’ pic in the above collage and you’ll see what I mean.   Thank goodness that my nails went back to normal a week later (after I stopped using duri).

BUMPY? After about 5 days or so I noticed that my nails looked like they had a lot of ridges on them.  Now I’m not sure if the surface of my nail actually got bumpy, or if it’s just the way Duri’s finish appears on the nail, or maybe my imagination?  But I am not a fan.

PEELING?  Yup, my nails started peeling.  I haven’t had peely nails for a few years now since I take really good care of them (with the exception of my naughty middle finger on my dominant hand that often peels or breaks).  But some of my nails are always perfect like my pointer/index fingers… and even they started to peel!  I didn’t notice the peeling ’til near the very end of the trial though. They seemed ok for the first week, but after about day 8 I noticed the tips looked like layers were lifting up a teeny bit, but I ignored it and kept doing what I was doing.  Until the last day….

JUDGEMENT DAY- After ten full days of usage (technically 11 days) I took my ‘after’ pics.  This is how it went down- I removed my nail color with nail polish remover, moisturized, got my camera out, and then I noticed that one of my nails was broken!  Yup, right in time for the photography portion of the review.  Oh duri, sorry to do this to you, but a picture says a thousand words!

It’s also important to know that I continued to use the product for another five days and managed to break two more nails in that time.  So that means I broke a total of 3 nails in a week.  That is so unlike me!  I never break that many in a week.  Boo.

Here’s a left-hand pic of day 10 right before my last duri application.  Not lookin too good. 😦

FINAL THOUGHTS-

I used this product for 15 days straight and I can say for sure that it had a negative impact on my nail health. So there ya have it.  I think Duri Rejuvacote is one of my least favorite nail strengtheners.  It’s right up there with Nail Tek (uck).  After using Duri I was forced to file my nails down to eliminate my peeling tips.  That’s $8 bucks down the drain!  I have gone right back to my Sally Hansen Maximum Growth and I feel better now.

But please remember that everyone’s nails are different, so it’s very possible that this product may work for you.  I’ve read a slew of blog posts stating that this stuff is phenomenal and they use it daily.   I have also heard from others that Duri can sometimes make your nailbed burn and sting like crazy?  What??  I’d like to know what the stinging is all about!?!  If this has happened to you, I’d like to hear about it!

If you’ve used duri before I’d like to know what you think!  Thank you for reading! And if you’re looking to grow your nails long here are my favorite strengtheners and some tips n tricks: Craftynail’s Nail Tips.

*This product was purchased by me.

Giant sized seche vite!!!!!!

I have this inherent need to hoard things that I use regularly.  Like shampoo, qtips, sandwich baggies for my lunch…..  these are all things that I use everyday.  I like to have good inventory on hand because whenever I get low on one of them it seriously stresses me out!  Seche vite topcoat falls into that category too.  So I recently made a smart purchase that will ensure me a steady supply of my holy grail topcoat.  Check out my gigantic salon-sized bottle of seche vite!!

I found this item on amazon and it was around $15 with shipping included.  It comes with a standard-size bottle of seche that contains the normal 1/2 ounce.  It also comes with a ginormous 4 ounce re-fill bottle and a funnel.   Because it has 4 and 1/2 oz it’s basically like buying 9 bottles of seche at once.  And for $15USD…. not bad at all!!!!!!!!  Here’s the contents of the box…

Instead of using the new little bottle of seche that came in the set, I decided to fill my old empty bottle.  Hoarding tendencies forced me to keep the new bottle for later.  🙂  When re-filling your seche you’re supposed to use the funnel that came with the set.  There were no instructions to indicate this, but it was a good assumption I think.    The funnel has a little line etched in it, so I figured that’s where I’m supposed to snip off the tip with scissors.  Well, that didn’t work, as you can see below.  The seche would not flow through!  I guess the formula is thick, so you’d need a bigger hole.  So I snipped it a little lower- still no luck.  I did this 3 or 4 times til the funnel was a blunt nub.  It was pointless!  The most that I got out of it was the one drip as seen in my pic.  LOL!  I ended up throwing away my funnel thing, and just poured the seche directly into the smaller bottle, which worked fine. 

Here’s the amazon listing if you are interested in buying a mammoth sized bottle of your own.   When I bought it a few weeks ago it was  $14.95 and free shipping, but now it looks like it’s $13.95 plus $5 shipping… but if you poke around maybe you can find a better deal online?  If you happen to invest in a salon-sized kit like this I’d also recommend some Seche Restore thinner too, as seche tends to thicken up over time.  I hated spending money on my Restore when I initially bought it…. it was the principle of it.  Like why should I have to buy a topcoat AND a thinner to go along with it??  But I’ve had the bottle for about a year now and it proved to be a good investment.  I have freshened up me and my mom’s seche bottles, as well as used it as a thinner for our goopy old bottles of lacquer.  I still have about a third of the bottle left which isn’t bad considering it serves two of us.

 So are you jealous of me and my ginormous seche?  Or do you have another fave topcoat that you use?

A Craftynail Year in Review

Since my Craftynail Blog has been alive and kickin’ for a year now I thought it would be fun to see what I’ve done in the last 365 days!

NAIL CARE TIPS

My nail health has really seen some improvement since I started blogging.  I’m able to change my nail style more often since these nails have been growing like weeds!  Did you ever notice that I have a NAIL TIPS page on the main menu of my blog?  In case you’ve never seen it here’s my tips for growing out your nails.  Look how long they were in this pic! ↓

CHANGE IS GOOD, RIGHT?

My nails have changed so much in the last year.  I haven’t found my ‘signature shape’ yet….I keep changing my nail length and filing them differently as time passes.  I noticed that most other bloggers have their own ‘look’ that I instantly recognize.  I can do a google image search and instantly spot other bloggers hands like, “oh hey, there’s Sabrina’s nails” or “yup, that’s the Daily Varnish”.  But I bet you can’t quickly pick a Craftynail manicure out of a lineup like that! I haven’t decided if this is something I want to correct, or if I should embrace the fact that I change my nail shape and length all the time.  Afterall, I’ve always said CHANGE IS GOOD.   So, I made a collage to show you how different my nails looked throughout the last year.  Which style is your favorite?  I always used to like square and long, but lately I’m enjoying my nails shorter and more round.↓

MY MOST POPULAR POSTS?

By a landslide, my most popular post is my OPI Nail Envy Review.  That article has racked up 6,500 hits so far!  The cool thing about my review is that I posted before and after pics… so you can really see the proof in the pudding!

Here are some other runner-ups in terms of page views.  Some of them get a lot of referrals from pinterest.  Especially my DIY nail soak…

http://craftynail.com/2013/03/21/what-shape-should-your-nails-be/

http://craftynail.com/2013/03/07/orly-ridge-filler-review/

http://craftynail.com/2013/01/03/diy-nail-soak/

http://craftynail.com/2013/05/09/easy-watercolor-nail-art-tutorial/

http://craftynail.com/2013/04/21/arizona-green-tea-nails/

http://craftynail.com/2013/02/18/heat-activated-mood-struck-polish/

MY FAVORITE POST?

My favorite manicure of mine is probably these rainbow gradient nails.  They’re so bright and cheery and they make me feel young again!

Some of my other faves are what I like to call my UNDERSIDE MANIS since I just love painting underneath my nails!  I also love my crafty posts that involve jewelry findings or beads.  Here’s a sampling…

NAIL CHALLENGES

In July 2013 I organized a nail art challenge with Brijit from Brijit’s Digits and Jemma from Eeeek! Nail Polish! called Oh Mon Dieu! It’s the Rather Awesome 31 Day Challenge Giveaway.  Yep, that’s a mouthful, and what a blast!  So many people participated!  963 manicures were submitted for the challenge.  And I know this because I just counted them all!  (click here to see all the manis) I also made great friendships in the process.  Brijit and Jemma and I are a good international team so we’re planning on having another world-wide Oh Mon Dieu Challenge again in 2014.  You ready for some OH MON DIEU PART DEUX?

Here’s some of my manicures from the Oh Mon Dieu Challenge…

AND THEN?

Blogging has quickly become such a big part of my life, I don’t see me stopping anytime soon.  In fact, I wish I started earlier!   Here’s what I’ve got up my sleeve…

• I’d love to do more Celebrity Copycat manis.  So far I’ve only done two copy cats (Adele and Wizard of Oz), but I plan to do my third soon- Kelly Osbourne’s pointy heart nails just HAVE TO BE copycatted!
• I’m currently hosting a monthly nail art challenge of sorts called NAIL ART IDEAS LINKUP (NAIL).  I’m running this linkup with the help of Brijit and Eeeek and we plan to keep coming up with fresh nail art themes each month!   Here’s the current info on NAIL if you’d like to submit your nail art.
• I’d like to create more tutorials.  My ghost nail art tutorial for halloween has been re-pinned more times than I can count.  So I’m assuming people would love to see more tutorials.  Safe assumption, right?
• I’d also love to become more active on Instagram… but did you know that IG only lets you upload pics from an app?  I upload my pics from a desktop pc, so unfortunately, IG isn’t really happening for me at the moment.  Maybe someday soon I’ll have some techy device with apps. <sigh> I have a Nook, but there’s no IG apps on there that allow you to upload.  Anyway…

Thank you for reading everyone!  Please know that I love all of the comments and LIKES that I receive.  Our nail blogging community is such a positive and supportive group of people- I’m thrilled to be a part of it!  I look forward to another year of fun with all of you.  Talk soon!  You know I’ll be commenting on your blogs and scoping you out on bloglovin.  I have a tendency to do that!

xx Jacqui aka Craftynail