Out The Door

I realized a few weeks ago that I neglected to mention this little trick for nails. I have long nails again (acrylic ones... my natural nails refuse to grow correctly) so I've been applying nail polish a whole lot more.  I was introduced to Out The Door by my first manicurist back in Quebec. She swore by it and, I gotta say, it never disappoints.

So what is it?

It's really the top coat that you want to apply over your nail polish. It does two things for you: it speeds up the drying time for your nails considerably and it gives it a super shiny finish.

You can find it at CVS for 4.99$ for the small size and at Sally's for 5.49$. You can probably find it in other pharmacy/beauty supply stores but it's hit and miss.

I believe that the big size is like 13$ and substantially bigger. While that seems like a good idea at first, I gotta say that this product dries up kind of quickly so it's probably not worth your investment. It may be that the bigger bottle would keep it fresher, longer, but I'm not so sure. I've actually had to throw away some small bottles when they got to mid-level because the consistency was too thick to apply correctly anymore. So you have to watch out for that. Despite that, though, it's still a very good investment.

Another thing to watch out for is cross-contamination with colors. When you apply this top coat (and this would be true for any top coat, really, not just this one), you will want to wipe the brush on a paper towel or piece of paper before dipping it in the product again.  Or else you risk having the product change color in the bottle. That can be cool if you want to bolster the color but not so cool if you're going for a different color scheme entirely.

So, use this after applying your two THIN coats of nail polish... and the Out The Door coat can be thick or thin, it doesn't matter much. You still want to wait a good 5-10 minutes before doing anything with your nails but it does dry fast and hard. And you can reapply the product if you want to refresh the shine.