If you look at my Instagram feed, then you will notice that I am a huge fan of nail polish and tend to favour darker shades over pastel and natural with shades such as Everymonth is Oktoberfest from OPI and Overly Onyx by CND being two of my favourites. I also tend to prefer Gel or Shellac right now, but will often swap and change what I am using. Once my nails are painted, there are two things I hate - chipped polish and having to take the polish off. So when the new Elegant Touch Soak ‘Em Off Acetone Remover Sachets £7.95 arrived, I was really looking forward to giving them a try because they sounded like everything I needed in one sachet.
The Elegant Touch Soak ‘Em Off Acetone Remover Sachets’s box contains 100 sachets in total and they claim to be able to remove nail polish, press-on gel nails, glitter polishes, gel polish and acrylics. Elegant Touch describe the sachets as being "innovative and groundbreaking with no-mess and no-stress, simply peel, wrap around the nail and leave on for 10 minutes before removing to reveal clean & healthy nails”. The one issue I had, is that had I not looked online for instructions, I would have had no clue how long to leave them on my nails. Within the box you just get the 100 sachets and are told to Buff, insert, wrap and remove, so quite simple but... buff with what? There is no buffer within the box, I tried to buff using the wipe but that just soaked off all the acetone. Thankfully I do have a buffer and figured out if I used that to break the polish to allow the acetone to sink it, it would help. So that is what I did.
Then removing the strips from the sachet is the easiest part of this task. Inside the sachets is a rectangular piece of cotton-like material which is coated, not too heavily, in a peach scented acetone based polish remover, which smells quite nice. Wrapping the strip around the finger is fine, but then it is findly getting it into the sachet without misplacing the strip, once it is in the sachet, you need to somehow ensure it doesn't fall off, so I used some popbands to secure one in place before attempting to do other fingers. Some advice, only do a few fingers at a time, otherwise it gets harder and harder to complete the task in hand and all of a sudden you feel like Edward Scissorhands. The other issue is that the box doesn't tell you how long to leave the sachets in place, thankfully online it says for at least 10 minutes, so whilst I had one hand wrapped, I went on instagram, liked a whole load of posts and then began the removal process.
Anyone who has removed gel or shellac nails in the past will know you need a further tool to essentially scrap the shriveled polish from your nails, so again, thankfully I had my own to use because there wasnt one included, despite being pictured on the box. So the removal of the nail polish, which in my case was gel, wasn't too much of an effort, the strips themselves do need to be soaked in more acetone if I am honest, but they do an alright job, more so because I added my own polish remover to the strip and then used my own UV light to encourage the acetone to further break down the polish.
I was really hoping these sachets would be as innovative and groundbreaking as I was expecting them to be, but sadly, I think they need a little more work and then they could be absolutely amazing and a definite must have item for those of us who like our painted nails.
Then removing the strips from the sachet is the easiest part of this task. Inside the sachets is a rectangular piece of cotton-like material which is coated, not too heavily, in a peach scented acetone based polish remover, which smells quite nice. Wrapping the strip around the finger is fine, but then it is findly getting it into the sachet without misplacing the strip, once it is in the sachet, you need to somehow ensure it doesn't fall off, so I used some popbands to secure one in place before attempting to do other fingers. Some advice, only do a few fingers at a time, otherwise it gets harder and harder to complete the task in hand and all of a sudden you feel like Edward Scissorhands. The other issue is that the box doesn't tell you how long to leave the sachets in place, thankfully online it says for at least 10 minutes, so whilst I had one hand wrapped, I went on instagram, liked a whole load of posts and then began the removal process.
Anyone who has removed gel or shellac nails in the past will know you need a further tool to essentially scrap the shriveled polish from your nails, so again, thankfully I had my own to use because there wasnt one included, despite being pictured on the box. So the removal of the nail polish, which in my case was gel, wasn't too much of an effort, the strips themselves do need to be soaked in more acetone if I am honest, but they do an alright job, more so because I added my own polish remover to the strip and then used my own UV light to encourage the acetone to further break down the polish.
I was really hoping these sachets would be as innovative and groundbreaking as I was expecting them to be, but sadly, I think they need a little more work and then they could be absolutely amazing and a definite must have item for those of us who like our painted nails.