Press Sample
A new-to-me company was very generous and sent me four of their polishes plus their topcoat to try out, so I'll be sharing swatches of those today!
The brand is Little Ondine and they make beautiful peel-off polishes that are water-based and contain natural ingredients. The polishes are completely odorless and fast-drying.
Since these polishes are meant to just peel off without polish remover, the wear time is obviously not as long as standard polish, but for someone like myself who changes their nails frequently, I have no issue with that. I was able to wear the polish for a day with no topcoat before I started getting a lot of tip wear and a lot of lifting. I do so much with my hands at work and use a lot of moisturizers, so I'm sure my results are even shorter than average. I tried again with their "Secret" base/topcoat and was able to make my mani last two days until it was starting to peel off on it's own.
With all of these polishes, they peeled off completely in full sheets with no damage to my natural nails. I slathered on some cuticle oil and let it sit for a minute, then was able to peel everything off with absolutely no problems.
I did my wear tests with the dark blue polish Bohemian, and am thrilled to report ZERO staining even without a base coat! Same for the red. I cringed a little with worry but was so thrilled when I took them off and did NOT have mustardy nail beds!
Currently Little Ondine's range is small with 13 colors, but they offer a nice variety of shades.
So let's get on with it shall we?
Amazon
The first polish is a pretty pistachio creme. I definitely found it easier to clean up around the edges while my polish was still wet, acetone seemed to somewhat break the bond of the polish to the nail for some reason if I waited until it was dry; however, this beauty only needed two coats for opacity, and by the time I was finished painting the fifth nail, the first was ready for a second coat!
Bohemian
This one, in all its wonderful royal blue joy, was almost a one-coater. I tried to keep my coats thin and did two, but could have probably gotten away with just one if I hadn't been quite as heavy-handed. The polish seemed to almost stick to itself on the second coat with all of these, so I needed slightly thicker second coats to get everything to spread out all nice and even. It is difficult to explain but it is as if the finish of the first coat grabbed on to the wet polish and it didn't cause streaking so much as it just kind of wouldn't let it budge once it was there. Regardless, they all had fantastic formulas, and I am in love with this color! It is by-far my favorite of the four! I've worn it three times at work now and gotten an endless number of compliments on it!
Morning Glory
Just like all the others, this one dried to a fairly shiny but almost rubber-like finish. It has that nice squishy sort of look to it. Morning Glory was the sheerest of all four, needing three coats for opacity. It is a pretty Tiffany blue color!
Lava
Last but not least, the other near one-coater of the four polishes I received is a sultry brick red looker. Very happy to report NO staining, and I could have gotten away with a single thick coat on this one, but did two thinner coats instead. This polish is like the entire season of autumn liquified in a bottle, absolutely gorgeous!
One of the other reasons I was so thrilled to try out these polishes was because I saw Janelle use the topcoat over foil and I was very intrigued by her results! I used a straight metallic foil to compare topcoats on because I figured it would show cracks the best. Of course my application is greatly lacking so it looks bad anyway, but I'm happy to report the Little Ondine topcoat did not change or affect the foil at all (first two nails)! Of course those still look horrible, but they looked the exact same way before the topcoat so....
On my ring nail and pinky I used Dream Polish's Gem Glam topcoat (but any standard polish topcoat is going to yield the same outcome), and there is a huge difference! I tried the same comparison on a more detailed foil, and while I could see the differences in person, it was too reflective to get any good, detailed pics.
As you can see in the macro shot, the regular topcoat crinkled my foil and even drained some of the color out of it. I never thought topcoats messed foils up that bad until I compared them to Little Ondine and saw the major differences. I'll be saving this baby solely for topcoating nail foils, it is just absolute perfection! Not a crack (topcoat-related) in sight! Def my new go-to when I foil!
Which of the four colors is your favorite? It is definitely the royal blue for me!
Thanks for stopping by today! And a big thank you to Little Ondine for letting me try these fun, innovative polishes!
