Ok – no, I’ve not regressed into childhood [although it can be VERY tempting some days right?].
My niece had her 6th birthday party this past week, and one of the gifts she received was a kids nail polish kit – it was called “Seven Days Nail Polish Cache” made by a company called Hot Focus. Of course I had to casually wander over after eating some cake, and when nobody was looking I checked it out.
This nail polish for kids set has, as you can imagine, 7 colors in it, as well as 2 cool shaped emery boards and 2 toe separators. The thought of my niece doing her toes at age 6 with these separators kind of cracked me up a bit!
So is this safe nail polish for kids? Well, kindof. She definitely can’t eat it, as it doesn’t claim to be non-toxic. The chemicals listed in this set of children’s polish is: Water, Polyvinyl Alcohol, Carbomer, Cellulose Gum, Phenoxyethanol, MEthylparaben, Ethylparaben, Butylparaben, Isobutylparaben, Propylparaben.
So, this kids nail polish set doesn’t contain any of the dreaded 3 as far as I can tell – no formaldehyde, no Toluene, and do DBP. So that part is good right? From that perspective it already seems a bit safer.
A quick google search on these kids polish ingredients seemed to indicate that “Paranens” are a class of anti-fungal and anti-bacterial compounds widely used in cosmetics, lotions, and even some for food additives. The Wikipedia article I found indicates they are practically non-toxic in concentrated amounts.
Continuing our research a bit further into whether this polish is safe for kids nails [and kids in general], I checked out Polyvinyl Alcohol. Again according to Wikipedia this stuff seems fairly non-toxic as well and suitable I assume for use in a nail polish for kids.
Can you tell I love my niece? Why else would I be getting this deep into chemical compounds! So I checked out Caromers…apparently these again are relative safe thickening agents [polymers] widely used in cosmetics, and according to this article are not acutely toxic either [although there are some side effects to ingesting large amounts]. So this reassured me a bit as well!
Glitter Nail Polish for Kids
As if you couldn’t tell from the heading for this section, this nail polish kit for kids consists of all glitter colors – not surprising since I think the glitter look seems popular among young girls [although you can use it for a cool crackle nail polish effect as an adult !].
My niece opened it up a day after her birthday, and since I was over at the house I decided to assist her [as the resident nail polish expert of course]. The kids polishes consisted of the following colors: Pink, Purple, Peachblue, Green, Red, Clear Color, Blue. All of these colors looked dark in the bottle but defintely sparkly with glitter, but as we found out when we tried the blue polish, they are very thin and go on almost clear. There also isn’t a lot in the bottle, so you really have to reach down deep with the polish brush to get some on it, and when applying it to kids nails [or any nail I guess] it goes on very translucent. You can see the shade you’re using along with the glitter in the polish, but they definitely aren’t dark colors or shades.
So of course you won’t find the cool names for kids polish collections like you do with something like the OPI Fall 2011 NAil Polish Collection, but I think for kids it is better to keep the names associated with, well, your basic colors and if you add some glitter into the polish you’ve got a hit 
I was also surprised that there wasn’t a black nail polish for kids, but upon quick reflection realized I didn’t want my niece to get into that color until she is, oh, like 30 maybe? I imagine most parents are thinking the same thing as black doesn’t always seem like an innocent, pre-teen or even teen type style! My guess is when I am eventually a parent the thought won’t even occur to me.
The polish went on very light, and took a few coats before you even saw a hint of Blue. The glitter, however, was pretty cool [to my niece for sure] and showed up well after coat #2.
So while this technically wasn’t a water based nail polish, and maybe not completely non-toxic nail polish, it does seem safer than most normal, mainstream polishes, and the ingredients seemed relatively harmless based on an internet search.
They also dry fairly fast -no doubt due to the alcolhol content in some of the ingredients, used of course as a solvent.
The box says that these kids nail polishes should last 7 days – I guess we will see as we are only on day 1.
BTW – if you think you want to check out this cheap nail polish kit for your kids, you can find it on amazon by clicking here. It runs about $15 which isn’t bad I guess for a complete kit. The kid sized bottles of polish don’t hold a lot of course, and with alcohol as the main solvent my guess is they will dry out pretty quick as well [so not a lot of use I think out of each color bottle!]
In any case it seems like a safer nail polish for kids than your typical OPI or China Glaze!
Talia [going to eat more cake]