About a week ago, I was on my way home from a doctor's trip with some new nail purchases (doctor trip in St. Louis = trip to Ulta), and I started reading the box on my bottle of Sally Hansen Insta-Dri, which I've finally gone back to after giving up the hope that Seche Vite will ever stop shrinking my polish. I looked up all the ingredients, and what I found was pretty interesting to me. I asked my Twitter peeps if they would also find such information interesting, and the resounding response was, "yes!" So, I decided to start a series about the more science-y (but interesting) parts of nail polish - why certain polishes act the way they do, what the ingredients are and what they're for, etc. Today, I planned to talk about some of the main ingredients in nail polish, but I started with nitrocellulose and found that there was a lot to say, so I decided to stick to that.
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| from GuideChem |
Nitrocellulose is found in pretty much any nail polish, including top coats and base coats - the only products I've found so far that didn't have nitrocellulose were Seche Vite and GOSH Fix Base Coat, which I found very interesting. (You can see my document with all my polish and treatment ingredients here.) If you remember, I wrote in my post on GOSH Holographic that I found it to work just as well over Seche Vite as over GOSH Fix Base Coat, and I suspect that the absence of nitrocellulose may make for a good base for holographic polishes. I also wonder if the absence of nitrocellulose in Seche Vite makes it shrink...I may try the GOSH base coat over polish to see if it does the same thing.
Here's a list of some other film formers found in nail polish: Cellulose, Cellulose Acetate/Cellulose Acetate Butyrate, Diethylhexyl Adipate, Ethyl Tosylamide, Hydrolyzed Collagen, Hydroxypropyl Methylcellulose, Nylon Fiber/Nylon, Phthalic Anhydride/Trimellitic Anhydride/Glycols Copolymer, Polyacrylic Acid, Polyethylene Terephthalate, Polyvinyl Butyral, Styrene/Acrylates Copolymer, Sucrose Acetate Isobutyrate, Sucrose Benzoate, Tosylamide/Epoxy Resin, Tosylamide/Formaldehyde Resin
That's all for today! I'm not sure how often I'll be doing this series - probably about once a week. Here's your recap on nitrocellulose.
- Nitrocellulose is the primary film former in most polishes.
- It helps make your nail polish come off faster when you use remover without affecting wear.
- The absence of nitrocellulose may make polishes a good base for holos.
