The manufacturer provided us with samples of both SOPHi & Piggy Paint, to facilitate this review.  As always, all opinions expressed here are entirely our own.  (The color I have on in these pictures is It’s a Girl Thing.)

Piggy Paint

You may have heard me mention Piggy Paint in the past.  We loved it then.  We still love it.  With three young girls in the house, there’s a lot of “dressing up.”  And have you smelled regular nail polish?  Ugh!  Even if all those chemicals weren’t awful for us to inhale, I still wouldn’t want to smell it.  One manicure and the whole house smells all day.  Blech.

I love Piggy Paint because my girls can “do their nails,” and I don’t have to smell that stink of regular polish, or worry about our health from inhaling it.  The girls love it ’cause the reasons I love it mean I actually let them paint their nails!

The thing about Piggy Paint is was never meant to be long-lasting.  It’s longer-lasting than those kids’ polishes that are made to peel off, but it was formulated for little girls, so longevity wasn’t the primary factor.  The line consists of fun, kid-friendly colors and a moderately long-lasting and quite safe formula.

Moms wanted something longer lasting and with more sophisticated colors…so the folks at Piggy Paint created SOPHi.

SOPHi

I have to say that I was pretty impressed with how this went on.  I’m really bad at applying polish. I mean, really bad.  My girls are usually better off doing theirs themselves!  But this eco-friendly nail polish goes on so smoothly and with just the right viscosity, that I had no trouble at all.

AND although it’s a several-step process (because it has a couple “extra” things — which I’ll get to in a minute), it dried so fast that the whole process took less than half an hour.  No wandering around the house for forty minutes trying not to use my fingers while I wait for that first coat to finally finish drying.

So how does that process work?  Well, there are three total bottles of “stuff” — the polish itself, a primer + sealer, and a shine coat.  The instructions are to do a coat of the primer, then 2-3 coats of polish, a shine coat, then a final coat of sealer (the same stuff as the primer).  It’s also recommended that you heat-set it with a hair dryer.  I know; that sounds like a lot of steps, but I’m telling you, it was fast!  (Seriously.  I’m usually a “can’t-be-bothered” kinda girl when it comes to fingernails, and I was really impressed with how quick a process this was.)

The primer/sealer is a thin, clear liquid and it does have a bit of an odor.  It’s a little reminiscent of rubbing alcohol, and it (the odor) disappears as soon as the primer is dry — which is pretty soon, since it’s so thin.

Then the polish.  It was exactly the right viscosity — not too thick, not too thin — and very, very easy to brush on.  It dried super-fast.  In fact, by the time I finished painting the second hand, the first was already dry.  I did two coats, with a third on the larger surface of my thumbnails, and that was plenty.  It definitely needs the shine coat, though, because it is quite matte at this point.  There is literally almost no smell at all, even if you get right up next to it and sniff the bottle.  (Not that I would recommend sniffing nail polish.  That’s probably not the greatest for you even if it’s free of the typical chemicals.  I’m just sayin’.)

The shine coat can be applied almost as soon as you finish the polish, if not right away, because of the polish’s short drying time.  It adds the sheen that is lacking in the polish alone.  No complaints here.

At this point, it’s recommended that you add a final coat of sealer — but I wouldn’t.  My nails were looking beautiful at this stage,  but when I brushed on the final sealer coat, the sealer interacted with the polish somehow and made some weird streaky places.

Taking it Off

Mine lasted perfectly for five days.  At that point it still wasn’t showing signs of chipping or anything, but I wanted to try removing it.  And I have to be honest, I was a lot less impressed with the remover than with the polish.

You know how with regular nail polish and nail polish remover, the remover basically dissolves the polish and then you wipe it off, kind of in liquid form?  This doesn’t do that.  It’s more like it softens the polish just slightly so you can scrape it off.  And it still isn’t easy.

The polish is a gel, which is smart — it lets it sit on the nail more effectively so it can go to work.  But it’s a little hard to spread on, because you have to kind of blob it out and then spread it around with your finger.  I wish it came with a brush or something.

But then it just doesn’t work very well.  I easily spent more time taking my polish off than I did putting it on, and I had little flakes of nail polish to sweep up off the floor when I was done.  That’s after having applied and reapplied the remover.  (Conventional nail polish remover doesn’t take it off, either.  I tried it one nail just to see.)

So…truly awesome nail polish.  But, Piggy Paint peeps…I’ve gotta be able to get it off when I’m done with it!

My Conclusions

Even with the removal difficulty, I still think this is worth grabbing, ’cause it makes for a beautiful manicure without the nasty chemicals or the stink.  (Just skip that last sealer coat.)  But be sure you set aside some time to chip the polish when you’re ready to move on, and in the meantime I hope the Sophi team will look into making the remover more effective.

Win Some!

I know you want to win some, right?  You know the drill.  Check out the Rafflecopter below (you’ll have to click through if you’re reading in an RSS feed, and it doesn’t always look right on mobile — you might need a “real” computer) and follow the instructions to enter.

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