Review: Migi Nail Art Pens

Hello!!!


About a week ago, I went to my first county fair. I experienced and enjoyed many things there, including some extreme deep-fried food. It was almost a nail-polish-free occasion, but at the very end, I pulled out a save! Among the stalls, I found some lovely ladies selling Migi Nail Art pens. Of course I had to stop and see what they were...they demonstrated the product, did a sample on me, and I left with one of the sets to bring home and play with (of course). Here's what they are:

How they come packaged

There are several different sets, and each contains 8 different colored polishes. I bought the 'Gold' set, named after the color of the packaging, which contained sparkly colors (shimmers and a glitter), for $25.00. There are 3 other sets including a set of primary creme colors, a set of neons, and a set of pastel colors, all $25 each; if you buy 3 sets, you get a discounted price of $65 for the three. There are a few other products available, including a set of two glow-in-the-dark polishes.

What the polishes look like outside of the package :)

The colors in the picture are accurate, and yes, they are yummy. :)

Now we get into the cool part. First, both polishes unscrew from one another so you can use them separately, which you'll want to do when/if you use the polish brush:

Polish unscrewed from the joining ring

And it gets cooler...if you unscrew the top of the polish, it has a brush, just like any other polish, for painting your nails. But the very top of the polish bottle also pulls off, to reveal a precision tip for doing nail art!

Eeekkkk! Cover them nekkid nails!

So when you want to do nail art, you leave the brush part screwed into place, and you just pull off the top part of the bottle, and use the pen tip to draw/dot/whatever. You control the flow of the polish by squeezing the side of the bottle, which is made of plastic.

A view of the nail art tip 

When you use the pen to draw, you can have it small like this, or you can screw the other polish back on, which gives you a little more control in your hand (since it's approximately the length of a pen or pencil).

Here is the sample that the sales rep did on my nails at the fair. Luckily I was on day one of a manicure and so didn't have any nail art of my own on that night already...She did a simple flower design to show me how fast and easy it is to use. The colors you see here are from the 'Silver' set, which contains primary colors with a creme finish (as you can see). I was very impressed that the white showed perfectly on top of a fairly dark purple, with no bleeding through:

Sales Rep's design on my ring finger

The next day I wanted to try out the pens and see how easy it really was to make the design she'd made, by myself. So I kept her design and created the following on the other nails:

My attempt to make a manicure out of her design

This was my first attempt using the pens, and if I do say so myself, I didn't do too badly. In fact, I think some of my flowers look better than hers. :) This wore without a problem for 2 days with topcoat. It probably would have lasted longer, but I removed it.

My next attempt to use the pens was for a manicure you've already seen:

I used the yellow-gold pen to make the pow-style balloons around the kitties in the manicure. They were not perfect--I learned that this polish will get dimensional on you very quickly if you push too hard (of course, that can be good if you want that to happen). That was fine for this manicure, and I had pretty good control getting the shapes I wanted.

Then came the scary part--trying to use the pen to freehand something other than dots and splotches...things that could actually be recognized. Here is my third attempt to use the pens; I didn't have a practice session before trying this--what you see is how it went, except for one design that I wiped off. Also, keep in mind, my freehanding skills are NOT good, so I am not bringing any talent to using these:

My Christmas tree! I'm so proud of it!

My test designs. Sun, moon, Snowflake (yes, really! Be nice), and some leaves. :)

From a different angle

Colors in the sunlight

I was really happy with my designs. No, they aren't as crisp and perfect as nail stamps. But for someone who can't freehand a design to save my life, this wasn't bad at all! This is the best I've been able to do at freehanding anything (see my Eiffel Tower on Bastille day if you don't believe me). I felt like they gave me better control than I get with brushes (if you are good with brushes you may not feel this way), and it was nice that I didn't have to keep dipping into the polish.

The one problem that I had with the set that I bought was that the shimmery white did have bleed-through from the polish under it, even though I had a coat of Seche Vite on between them. Maybe this wouldn't happen with a different topcoat, I don't know, but I wouldn't count on it. If you look at the picture above you can see the white looks partly white and partly purple; this is because I took this quickly after doing the nail art, and the color was still bleeding up into the white. As I'm typing, the 'white' is now a pretty shimmery medium purple. So, I am choosing to see this not as a tube of shimmery white polish that shows bleed-through, but a tube of shimmery magic polish that turns into a complimentary color to whatever you put it on top of. I can see doing some cool designs that capitalize on that. :) But, positive attitude aside, it does get bleed-up from the base color; if you want a white that doesn't do that, get the 'Silver' collection. None of the other colors I had in my collection had any issue with bleeding at all.

One last thing about this product. The sales rep told me, and it says on the box, that you get 'free' refills/replacements for life. I thought to myself "Of course you do! For an outrageous shipping cost! I didn't fall off the turnip truck yesterday, ya know, sister". Well...turns out, there *is* a shipping cost, but it isn't outrageous at all. You get 2 refills (you don't have to send in your empty, they just send them to you) for $2.99 shipping. I tested this out so I can report back to you on it. For $1.50 each, that's not a bad deal, at all. In fact it's about half the price of what they normally cost.

UPDATE: I got the refills, and everything worked fine, fast, and easy. For the $2.99 shipping charge, I got the two refills within a few days, and they were the right size, etc. You're able to choose your colors, and when I ordered, I was able to choose from *all* of their colors, not just the colors that appeared in my set. So this is legit, no hidden cost besides the shipping, no hoops to jump through, nothing else to buy. :)

So, my overall opinion of these is that they are fun and easy to use even for a freehand noob like me. Eight colors for $25 is certainly not outrageous, and the product delivers what it promises, including 'free' refills for a small shipping fee. I'd definitely say they are worth giving a shot. If you decide you want to, you can find them at www.miginailart.com. 

I think I might need the creme finish set...>.>

Thanks for stopping by!

M.

(the products in this review were purchased with my own money.)