WHICH BASECOAT TO USE WITH OPI PUSH & SHOVE?

Hi everyone, how are you all today? Looking forward to tomorrow? Yeah didn't think so, hehe !

So earlier this week I picked up OPI Push and Shove, this was pretty much the only polish I wanted from the Gwen Stefani collection. 

When I got it I was curious to find out the best basecoat to use with this and so I decided to do a little experiment and share it with you guys as well. 

The polish comes with a special base coat called Lay Down That Base which is the recommended base coat for this polish. 

I used 3 different base coats.

On my pinky I used Essie Ridge Filler Base Coat

On my ring finger I used OPI Lay Down That Base

On my middle finger I used the Nfu Oh Aqua Base equivalent by Jessica

On my pointer I didn't use any base coat. 

Chrome polishes such as this one tend to highlight every single imperfection on the nail and their worst enemy is ridges, so it's recommended that you buff your nails prior to using this to get a lovely even finish. 

I didn't buff any of my nails and I've included a picture of my naked nails to try and show my natural ridges (please excuse the staining) 

My accent nail has the worst ridges and my pinky also has some noticeable ridges but my middle and pointer nail are pretty smooth and don't really have any ridges. 

Ok, so here is one coat of Push and Shove on all the nails. 

As you can see on my pinky the polish does not work with regular base coat. 

It does have the potential to be a one coater but the application is a bit tricky so I prefer to use a second coat to smooth it out. 

This is two coats of Push and Shove, I waited 10 minutes after applying the first coat before painting on the second coat.

As you can see a second coat has made all the nails look better, the pinky looks a bit lumpy.

The middle finger is the brightest of them all and also the smoothest looking, Aqua Base does tend to brighten holographic and chrome polishes though so that's not too surprising. 

You can still see some ridges on the ring finger but I do think Lay Down That Base has smoothed out the ridges a tiny bit.

You can see every imperfection on the pointy finger so base coat is a must unless you are blessed with perfect ridge free nails!

So in conclusion, don't use a regular base coat but do definitely use one and make it either the Lay Down That Base or Nfu Oh Aqua Base or one it's several dupes.

 I personally think the Aqua Base is the best base because it also brightens the nail polish on the nail for an even more of a mirror like finish. 

As a bonus I've included a little wear time test too. The following pictures are after 24 hours of wear in which I washed a few dishes and tapped at the keyboard for a few hours. 

You can start to see the tip wear now, it's worse on the pointer finger where I haven't used a base coat. There is also quite a bit of wear on the middle finger and minimal tip wear on the other two fingers, so whilst Lay Down That Base doesn't brighten the polish or smooth the ridges it does increase the longevity of the polish. 

I'm still wearing this as I'm typing this and more tip wear has shown and it's worse on the right hand compared to the left. 

Ok so here are some regular swatches :)

This was really long wordy post, hope you made it to the end! I hope you found this useful :)

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