We Tried It: Terra Beauty Bars Nail Polish & Quick Dry Plant Drops

I love the look of nail polish. It’s so much fun to add color to my daily life by layering on my favorite edgy tones, like this badass Dark Eggplant shade I chose. What I don’t like about nail polish is that it smudges, chips, and smells like it should be banned for anyone under 21. As a guitarist and crochet artist, I use my hands for a lot of things that don’t typically play well with polish.

For this experiment, I tried both the Terra Beauty Bars #15 and the plant drops quick dry oil on my fingernails. Spoiler alert: These products did not disappoint. The quick-dry serum mostly eradicated the potential for me to smudge my nails before they were fully dry (and it also boasts of good-for-you ingredients you can trust, like coconut oil and avocado oil).

I typically don’t do fancy stuff like a top coat, but I more recently have gotten into that simply because I’m sick of my polish not staying put. However, to properly gauge the efficacy of these products, I opted to go without and just try the plant drops on top.

I applied two very smooth coats of Dark Eggplant #15 before taking the plunge and going for the drying oil. I immediately noticed the sheer lack of chemical odors from this stuff. It literally smells like nail polish, but not to the extent you’d typically think – how could this be? That’s the magic of using real ingredients. I’m here for it.

I wish I could share exactly how long it took to dry with the drying oil, but I was afraid to touch it too soon to find out. But I would say that it was definitely faster than polishes typically dry, and while this product wasn’t actually a topcoat, I do think it functioned somewhat similarly to what a topcoat might do (at least to act as a somewhat protective barrier).

Application was super easy: The plant drops came with an eye dropper that allowed me to precisely apply them to my wet polish. Then, the serum disappeared as quickly as it fell, adhering quickly to my nails. I have no idea how an alcohol-free liquid could act as a drying agent, but this one definitely did.

This part was the most impressive to me, because this nail polish would rarely chip (and really only slightly if I kept agitating the same areas repeatedly like I did when crocheting). I literally noticed it growing out more than chipping, which shows that whatever natural ingredients are in here, they actually do their job better than traditional polishes. This stuff stays put, so you can rock your chosen color as long as you’d like (or at least until your nails grow out). For me, the seven-day mark was about where I would want to remove it and start fresh, but as pictured, it really didn’t look so bad even then.

I noticed the color stayed pretty bright the whole time, so it never got dingy or gross in tone. Everyone’s been there before: the black nail polish that turns a bit gray, or the white that gets slightly yellowed. Not a cute look on anyone – so how well this polish held up was a really great surprise in that category.

About the author: Angelina Singer has been writing for Grove Collaborative since 2021. She loves all things luxury and fun, with an emphasis on whimsical pop punk style and being your best self. Here at Grove, she thrives doing all of this and more as a content editor and writer alongside her gigs as a published author and freelancer.