My Sally Hansen's is cloudy????

[AllenOK]

Over the past week or so, I noticed that my bottle of Sally was starting to get a little thick. I dumped in a little Acetone and mixed it around a bit. Well, it turned cloudy. That was a couple days ago. I checked it a little bit a ago, and it had pretty much cleared up, until I noticed the mixture wasn't smooth. I shook it up a bit, and it turned cloudy again. It still works, but, it dries cloudy as well.

Did I kill it, or will it clear up?

If it is dead, at least it's cheap to replace.

[Gandolf]

Hi Allen,

I wrote a long reply, but it took long enough that I had to try to log back in, and somehow got kicked out of the system, so this is the short version.

Basically if your acetone has picked up water, when you add it to the polish, the acetone will dissolve in the polish and thin it, but the water will not dissolve and will instead form very tiny droplets which you will see as clouding.

Given some time, the droplets of water will clump together and grow large enough to fall to the bottom because the water is more dense than is the polish. When that has happened to the point that almost all of the free water has precipitated out the polish will again become clear.

However, when you shake it back up, the droplets again become suspended in the water, and it again appears cloudy. Also, the larger particles will cause the polish to no longer be smooth.

Don't know if you have any water in the acetone, but if do, then it can cause the sympoms you saw. If that is the cause, then the Sally Hansens is toast.

Regards,

Gandolf

[billhouk]

$4.95 for the large bottle. I saw the small bottle on sale for $1.27...

[narcodog]

If you used nail polish remover, it contain water.

[okflyfisher]

I did the same thing with my wife's nail polish remover only to realize water was part of the ingredients

[Uncle Jesse]

It's not Sally's but the Dollar Tree around here have polish, usually clear and colors for a buck a bottle.

[Silver Creek]

Hi Allen,

Basically if your acetone has picked up water, when you add it to the polish, the acetone will dissolve in the polish and thin it, but the water will not dissolve and will instead form very tiny droplets which you will see as clouding.

Don't know if you have any water in the acetone, but if do, then it can cause the sympoms you saw. If that is the cause, then the Sally Hansens is toast.

Regards,

Gandolf

I agree with Gandolf.

If you used pure acetone, I think there is water in the acetone. I think your acetone is saturated with water and when mixed with the lacquer thinner in your head cement, the acetone mixes with the thinner and the result is that the acetone is no longer able to hold the water in a polar hydrogen bond.

Hydrogen bonds are weak. When one breaks, the free water molecule must either find another free water molecule or another acetone molecule to bind with. When there is a smaller % of acetone in the mixture, there is a greater chance the free water molecule will find another free water molecule to bind with and then you eventually get a water droplet that causes cloudiness. Basically the lacquer thinner in your original mixture is "driving out" the water in the acetone by creating a situation that allows water droplets to form in the head cement.

I would get rid of the acetone by pouring it into an old open paint can and placing it outside to allow it to vaporize off. Then mix any residual with sand and put it into the garbage.

I don't use pure acetone to thin my Sally Hansen's. I use lacquer thinner. Although acetone is a component of lacquer thinner, there are other nonpolar components like toluene, napthas, etc that make lacquer thinners less likely to absorb water. And even when some water is absorbed by the acetone, when you mix the acetone thinner into the head cement the % of acetone is not changed enough to allow "free" water molecules to coalesce.

Laquer thinner is also less volatile than pure acetone so you won't need to thin it as often. Finger nail polish is a lacquers so why not use a lacquer thinner?