Review: Bobbie Base Coat

Hi everyone! Sorry for being missing in action this past week. I'm just really really busy studying for my board exam which is just 2 months away. My current schedule: AM - study; PM - work. I can't seem to squeeze blogging in my new sched and that explains the lack of posts. Anyway, I'm back for a moment and I have for you here a review of a nail product that I use.

I'm sure you all know how much I love nail polishes. I almost don't see my nails bare for more than a day anymore. The downside to that is the staining. Yes, nail polishes can stain the nails. Some brands of polish stain more than others. Some shades stain more than others. Right now I don't know if there's a way to completely keep the nails from being stained but I do know a way to reduce any staining that may occur. This is where base coats come in.

A base coat acts as a protective barrier between your nail bed and the polish, and it helps prevent the polish from staining your nail. It also smoothens out the nail surface and fills in any creases and ridges so that the polish would go on smoothly. Some base coats even contain ingredients that can help strengthen your nails and pervent them from chipping and being damaged.

The first and only legit base coat I've used is the one from Bobbie. 

It's a legit base coat, as written on the label.

Ingredients: Ethyl acetate, butyl acetate, toluene, nitrocellulose, tosylamide/formaldehyde resin, isopropyl alcohol, dibutyl phthalate, polyvinyl butyral, benzophenone-1.

It's not free of the so-called 'toxic trio' of nail polish ingredients but it says on the label that the product is "toxin-free." Read *this post from All Lacquered Up* to know more about the toxic trio.

One bottle contains 15 ml of product. The liquid has a yellow tint as you can see in the pictures but it goes on clear. 

I've been using this one for months now and I still get yellow nails from time to time, depending on the nail polish that I use. For me it's a little bit effective. I change my polish every week and here are my observations. Sometimes I use a strongly staining polish and after one week of wear, my nails are stained big time. Then I use the base coat and apply my next polish. After one week, the stained part of the nail moves up as the nail grows and the whole nail doesn't stay yellow. 

Here's an eeekkk-worthy picture of my stained nails.

Click to enlarge. Beware, though. Yellow nails, eeekkk!

This shows that the base coat does help reduce staining up to some extent but if the nail polish used is strongly staining, there's no escape. (Note that I was already using this base coat even before I took the before-pic but I still got a bad stain.)

Pros:

• Dries quickly. It dries in about a minute.
• Easy to apply.
• Doesn't turn goopy even after many months.
• Inexpensive. I forgot the exact price. I think it's in the P35-45 range.
• Widely available. Available in most supermarkets and drugstores.

Cons

• Contains the 'toxic trio'
• Cheap packaging
• Doesn't work very well when the nail polish used is strongly staining.
• Says toxin-free on the label when it's actually not toxin-free.

I don't know why I still use this product. Maybe because I find it wasteful to buy a new one and throw this away. I'm planning to buy a new (and hopefully a better) base coat, though. Any suggestions? How's the Etude House Jelly top coat and the TFS top coat? :]