Last week I had a manicure and wanted a color that was modern & pretty. And hopefully, long-lasting.  I  didn’t go with shellac because even though I love how long it lasts – it pretty much destroys my nails.   So, I went with a polish in this beautiful color – Thistle Thicket by CND Vinylux.  It’s a gorgeous creme grey with a lilac hue.

The denim in the pictures brings out the lilac, however, the polish color changes according to the light and look goods with everything.  Best of all, CND Vinylux is a “weekly” nail polish which actually does last a week – or at least almost a week.  Five days later,  I had just a few tiny chips.  I wanted to touch them up so I immediately ordered the polish as well as the CND Weekly Top Coat from Amazon.  My major discovery out of this, however, is that CND Weekly Top Coat is all you need to make your regular polish last for the 4-5 days.  I just added a coat over my regular Opi polish and it not only added a brilliant shine, but turned it into a “weekly” polish as well!

Another bonus is that according to CND’s website, it’s at least “3-Free” – no toluene, formaldehyde or DBP.   The CND Weekly Top Coat is a staple.

Another recent find of mine, which upon retrospect may seem fairly obvious, is that buying professional grade 100% pure acetone polish remover will save you serious time and effort in taking off your nail polish.  It’s stronger than regular polish remover but since it takes less swipes (about 1), you don’t have to keep reapplying it.  Since it’s more drying than regular polish remover, you might want to apply some olive oil to your cuticles before removing the polish.  Overall, I think the chemical exposure is less because it’s much faster than having to douse your nails in remover that hardly works.  I picked up the above at the local Rite Aid but acetone is acetone so any 100% acetone remover should do the trick.

Thanks for reading & please let me know if you have any other quick manicure tips & tricks and/or thoughts of the Vinylux weekly line.