Seche Vite - is it worth it?

This is something I've been asked a few times on Twitter, and I always seem to take about 7 tweets to say everything I want to about it, so tonight I decided it would be much better to actually write a post about it.

Firstly, I took two pictures of the products I have, on different colour bases.  I couldn't decide which picture worked best, so I'm putting them both up.  Here's the first:

I bought the tiny bottle first to test it out, and then I went on to buy the regular sized bottle.  I now keep the small bottle in my nail art box, so if I forget to bring the big bottle out, I don't mess up my nails rooting through my top coats to find it.

The benefits to it:

1) It does dry super duper fast

2) It is exceptionally shiny

3) It is hardwearing

4) It doesn't smudge nail art

...All you could want from a topcoat, right?  But there are drawbacks.....

1) Seche goes gloopy pretty flippin quickly
If it does go gloopy, the fast dry benefits are lost, and then it dries on the surface and stays wet underneath, which makes it easy to dent

2) It smells REALLY strong, strong enough to give you a headache if you use if for too long

3) As it's drying it shrinks away from the tips of my nails, which means my tips wear faster than usual.  If I wrap the edges I've found it shrinks down from my cuticles, which makes my manicure look like it's prematurely growing out

4) When you get down to the last quarter of the bottle, you have to tip it sideways to get a decent coverage of polish on the brush, as it doesn't quite reach down far enough

So it's not all good.

Doing research to combat the gloopiness I discovered that Seche doesn't agree with regular thinner (I usually use the Mavala one), so I had to buy a bottle of Seche Restore.  It's a bit trial and error of how much to use, I like the addition of the pipette in the box, which makes it easier. I've been adding five drops, having a bit of a shake and checking it.  Apparently though if you add too much all you have to do is leave the lid off and keep checking it until it's evaporated a bit.

I bought all of mine off Amazon (I do alot of shopping there):
Regular Seche Vite £6.79
Seche Restore £10.95
Both with free delivery

I couldn't find the tiny bottle any more, perhaps they've stopped selling it, I have had it for a while.

Here's the other picture I took:

The clarity isn't as good in this picture, but the all white background looks cleaner, this is why I couldn't decide!  Which picture do you prefer?

So to sum up, even though Seche has it's drawbacks, I still always use it for over my nail art, as it's the only one I've found so far that doesn't drag my designs, but if I'm just painting over a plain manicure, especially one I'm planning to keep on for a few days, I'll use a different topcoat that doesn't have the shrinking issues.  I'm not sure you'd be able to use up your full bottle of Seche Vite without also having a bottle of Seche Restore.

I hope this has helped anyone who's considering it, it's always best to know in advance the pro's and con's before you let go of your hard earned cash!

Until next time....

MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~