PSA – how to use Essie – Good as new, if you bought a bottle and don’t know what to do with it

I hope this type of post is allowed. The info below is based on my anecdotal evidence from doing this exactly 3 times, but I would love to know the science behind it if anyone knows. It’s not a promo, I bought it in a supermarket.

TLDR: hated it when I bought it, then discovered if you soak your nails in jojoba oil and use this polish after, it will ‘lock in’ the oil into your nail and now I use it as a mini nail spa treatment. I feel like I discovered something new, but maybe it works with other polishes

I, like many others bought this polish thinking it was a nourishing/blurring/strengthening base coat.

I have good experience with the brand and I love love love To the rescue. I started using it as my regular base coat when I discovered my nails have been peeling after Orly rubberised base which contains PVB.

So when I saw Good as new in a shop, I bought it thinking it will be similar if not better than To the rescue. Boy was I wrong. The consistently is completely different, it’s not really a regular polish it dries very matte and worst of all, AFTER I put it on for the first time I went to read about it and discovered you’re meant to wear it in its own. So no color polish or top coat.

The website says wear it for a week, but mine started chipping off after about 3 days and it didn’t look good. So naturally, I put it away and thought I’m not going to use it ever again.

Then a decluttering day coincided with me taking off my mani, (was 6 days old so had to come off otherwise my nails would probably get damaged) so I did a jojoba oil soak and wore latex gloves for about 4 hours as I cleaned. My nails drank it all up and were almost fully transparent.

After I was done, I was too tired to do a full mani, but I’m also trying to grow my nails and always keep them painted so couldn’t go to bed without doing anything. Also if you’re like me, you can’t go to bed dirty after spending a day cleaning, but I can’t shower with naked nails, can’t shower after doing nails as they need time to fully dry and don’t have good experience with wearing gloves as the water ultimately always gets in.

Behold! I remembered I had a bottle of something that dried super quickly and will keep my nails covered until the next day. So I put on 2 coats of Good as new, had a shower and went to bed.

If you ever soak your nails in jojoba oil, you’ll know they can turn translucent, which means the nails absorbed the oil, and this is good because it keeps them flexible etc. but as you get on with your day, the nails turn back white within a couple of hours

And this is where I think Essie – Good as new, did a really good job. When i looked at my nails the next morning, they were still as translucent as the night before even though normally they would be back to white in that time, when wearing normal polish.

So there you have it, if you have a bottle of this polish, soak your nails in jojoba oil and then paint 2 coats of this stuff and leave it in for a day before you do a mani. My nails look better, I’ve done this 3 times now and maybe it’s just placebo but I feel like they look healthier?

It’s also possible that this polish does nothing to ‘lock the oil in’ but because I don’t swipe my nails with acetone before I paint it, they just somehow manage to retain the oil for longer.

I also don’t use acetone after oiling before a normal mani, but I wipe off the excess oil with a tissue before painting a base coat. But my nails never stay translucent for long.

Anyways, if you got this far, thank you for reading my rambling, I wanted to share my thoughts because I too didn’t like this polish at first but now feel like I discovered a life hack and though others might want to try this and it could help their nails.