Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Weird Wednesdays ~ Gold Pens

Hello Dahlings!
 
Today's adventure into da weird is about testing gold art pens to see which ones can be used to draw on your nails & can handle top coat. I'm learning a lot thru these tests! Particularly, there are 3 factors to test for:
 
1) Will da pen or marker write on nail polish? If it's labeled 'permanent', 'writes on almost any surface' or 'water proof' its worth testing, but if its not labeled
with any of these, it still might be worth testing.
Translucent & opaque pens can potentially work, so test them both.
 
2) If it writes on my nails, will it dry? Wet ink is more likely to smear when you add top coat, so ink that dries in a few minutes is good, right? Maybe. I've had dry ink smear when top coat hits it & I've had wet ink take top coat without smearing. Go figure!
Testing is the only way to know for sure.
 
3) Can this ink have top coat applied & not smear or disappear? If an ink passes #1 & #2, it still has to pass #3 or it flunks. Granted you can go without top coat on your nails, but your mani may not last more than a day or so.
I use Seche Vite almost exclusively (I even use it to cure my polish before I add matte top coat), so if an ink can't handle SV, I won't use it for nail art.
 
Here we go!
 
Da line up: polish ~ Sally Hansen Burgundy Orchid; gold pens from da top ~ Sharpie Extra Fine tip oil based Gold, Extra Fine Deco Color Liquid Gold (also oil based), SRX Metallic Color duo tip in gold, Stanford Uniball Gel Impact 1.0 tip in gold, no name cheap gel pen. All 5 are opaque & show true on any color background.
 
This is 2 coats of Burgundy Orchid. It's from Sally Hansen's retired Nail Prism line, but it can still be found on da interwebby. It's a yummy burgundy to blue duo chrome. I love it cuz most duos close to this one are more of a plum or purple base with a blue shift. This one is definately dark red shifting to blue thru da purple zone.
 
See?
 
Da results: all 5 pens tested did write on polish, however, they diverged after that.
Thumb ~ Sharpie oil based did dry, but smeared when SV was applied.
Index ~ Deco Color also dried, but completely dissolved under SV.
Middle ~ SRX dried & held up to SV, but these pens, while oqaque, look kind of faded...like they aren't quite opaque enuf. More testing is needed with da other colors.
Ring ~ Uniball not only dried fast, it didn't smear or dissolve!
no name ~ this one didn't dry at all! I waited like 5 minutes for all the inks to dry, but each time I touched this one to check, gold came off. I even wiped it all off with my finger at one point, but decided to put it back on to see how badly it would smear under SV. What do you know? Even tho da ink was still totally wet when I applied da SV,
it didn't smear! Go figure! LOL
 
Da winner is: Stanford Uniball Gel Impact 1.0! They also make silver, black & white pens in this line. I found mine in a 2 pack with da silver at Office Depot for about $5.
 
Thanks for stopping by!
~ Inky
 
 
 
 
 

4 comments:

  1. I'm getting me some uniballs! Great post, thanks for the investigations! x x x

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    Replies
    1. Thanks & you're welcome! I've only tested da Gel Impact line, but I have a white Signo that looks promising too.

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  2. awesome post girl. i have some sharpies ive been wanting to test out, but ugh, i dont want to now! i did hear if you use hairspray or another fixatif after the pen and before the top coat, that it will help with smearing.

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    Replies
    1. Thank you dahling & thanks for da tip on using a fixative! It's da oil based Sharpie paint pens that are a total fail. I tested regular permanent Sharpies last night & they do pretty well. That's next Wed's post so I'm not saying any more right now. LOL

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