Top coating your nail art painted with acrylic craft color gives a beautiful depth in the colors. BUT once a while a polish bleeds through the acrylic craft paint (and often also other polishes) when you top coat - and I tested this using 5 different top coats (normal + quick drying) with the same result.
It can be a cool effect, it you are prepared and make it work for you - but it also can ruin your design completely - and that is of course not cool at all!
NOTE: Bleeding polishes are not a problem if you do not paint nail art on them (or possibly only use darker colors for the nail art), they are fine for normal use.
Below I'll show you the bleeding polishes I have in my collection. Interestingly enough they all are high end brands...
For the test I used a top quality, well pigmented white acrylic craft color that never gives me any kind of problems. I let the polishes dry a little longer than normal between coats and after the second coat before I painted with white, yellow and a mossy kind of green.
First we have the beautiful Illamasqua Optimist, a very intense yellow based orange with a rubber finish. This is a really severe bleeder - no top coat to the left and top coat to the right. As you can see the yellow even penetrates the white on the one without top coat.
Can it be fixed? - I repainted the lower row and top coated once more.
Verdict, it's not worth the time and effort, you hardly can see any difference at all, so my advice is to use it as is or as a perfect color in a gradients with other polishes.Or try with dark acrylic craft colors.
Next we have Illamasqua Force, a beautiful blue with a rubber finish, also a pretty severe bleeder, but not totally uncool...
Can it be fixed? - I repainted the lower row and top coated once more.
Verdict, it did help just a little bit, so it's up to you...
Next we have Pretty Serious Santa's Sunburn, a gorgeous red with a slight orange/yellow hue. As with Force I find the effect kind of cool.
Can it be fixed? - I repainted the lower row and top coated once more.
Verdict, it can be fixed rather well, but I likes it just as much before...
Hipster Chick from Chick lets a little yellow through the white - not much, but in a not so cool way.
Can it be fixed? - I repainted the lower row and top coated once more.
Verdict, no not really, use other colors than white and you will be fine...
Finally we have the beautiful red holographic Glitter Gal Code Red. I think the bleeding here is cool unless of course you are painting a snow man or something that really has to be really white.
I'm not showing a can it be fixed photo, because it can, if you want to go over it again and top coat once more.
Tuesday I'll show you a mani on Optimist that was ruined because I didn't know it was a bleeder...
Very interesting! Seems if you know it'll happen, you might use the effect as a design element.
SvarSletDo you find the type of topcoat makes a difference in the bleeding?
Exactly - and I tried several top coats - quick drying, slow drying, different brands - no difference...
SletI've tried that a couple of times too, and I thought it was the top coat's fault the first time it happened :D
SvarSletI forgot to say: It's a really helpful post, thank you! ♥
SletYes, I had the same thought too - but experimented and found there were no difference - thank you my friend, I'm happy you found it useful!
SletI will keep it in my mind Maria :)
SvarSletI'm glad you think the post is useful - thanks Irmak!
SletVery interesting post. I don't think this happened to me to such an extent yet. But I remember polishes changing other polishes.
SvarSletI agree that some of those effects actually look quite nice - if you want it that way. ;) I especially like the effect with Force.
Yes, I like the effect in Force, but probably in Santa's Sunburn as my favorite. I'm happy you found it useful, thanks a lot Kayono!
SletI kind of like the effect some of them have when the polish bleeds through! I definitely wouldn't expect this from a high-end brand, though, that's crazy!
SvarSletI agree, it is unexpected in these brands, maybe in really cheap polishes, but not really in high end brands...
SletLove the oen with the green glitter background :)
SvarSletIt's a pretty polish - if you stay clear of white nail art LOL
SletI run in to this often when stamping with white as well. I think orange and green are notoriously bad for bleeding into white. TY for doing this great comparission for us.
SvarSletThank you Karen, it seems like it's a problem polishes in between too - thanks for sharing this!
SletAh this is new knowledge to me, TY! I'm getting into acrylics recently and I guess I was silly because I never considered there could be blleding. Great post Maria! :) kisses,
SvarSletCristina
I don't think you are silly LOL - I didn't know either before it happened to me the first time - so I'm happy you found it useful!
SletVery interesting post! :-) It happened also to me, and now when I think better, I didn't use any cheap brand, I used a normal brand for my base colour... Unfortunately, there is not much that we could do about this fact, maybe to avoid the white colour when creating some nail art on "bleeding" polishes...
SvarSletThanks a lot Tanja - and no, nothing much to do about it, either use the effect or steer clear of a bleeding polish :)
SletCouldn't you prevent this by using top coat before doing nail art? Or do you have to paint directly on the polish?
SvarSletI always do this before stamping or nail art (base coat - polish - top coat - stamping/nail art - top coat) and never had any problems.
Two coats of top coat does not help - as you can see in the test, they bleed through anyhow. I think maybe you just were lucky :) I have on my blog 350+ handpainted nail art designs - and only found these polishes, and to top coat before painting seems meaningless to me when painting freehand, also because a doubble top coat does not work well for me in regards to wearability...
SletWow this is interesting! I had this trouble when I first used acrylic paints. I need some practice...hehe Thanks for sharing this!
SvarSletI'm glad you found it useful Traci - but even if you practice it will not help if a polish made up it's mind to bleed LOL
Sletthis has happened to me before but i blamed the top coat, now i know who the offenders really are! lol very cool post Maria! :)
SvarSletThanks a lot Lydia, I'm so happy you found the true culprit :)
Slet