After roughly five years of saying "I don't want to use gel polish because I enjoy re-doing my nails every week," I have found myself at a place in life where I am SO HAPPY to be able to keep the same nails for 2 weeks or more!
Don't get me wrong, I'd still be doing my nails every week if I had the time. But now that I work 40 hours a week, and (pre-COVID anyway) have a very busy social life, I just don't have the time or the energy for my nails that I used to.
So after my last post where I donned at-home gel polish for the first time ever, I decided I needed more gel polish. ALL the gel polish, in fact! But gel is expensive and I didn't work for the entire month of April, so I settled for a 5-piece collection by UberChic Beauty: Jet-Setting Holo, their summer 2020 collection.
I also snagged UberChic's gel base coat, their no-wipe top coat, and some regular stamping black & white polish.
I ended up wearing my first color, Meet Me In Tahiti, for a MONTH plus TWO DAYS. And it stayed SO glossy! I'm so, so happy and impressed with the longevity of this gel. It never lost any shine, and it never once scratched, dented, cracked, peeled where my nails are peeling, or shrunk away from the edge!
The color, as you can see, is pretty much perfect for my life. It matches roughly 45% of everything I own, including but not limited to my Switch Lite and third-party skin, my fave Snag Tights, and the shirt I was wearing the day I did my nails.
It even matches the label of my new favorite beer! If you've never had Mas Agave, it's a gose-style ale that's aged in tequila barrels. It tastes like a margarita in beer form. And this year, Founders released a grapefruit variety! It's so yummy. Mark and I stocked up on two 4-packs each of both varieties and we've only managed to make them last through the whole stay-at-home order because we also keep getting White Claw and Dos Equis delivered with our groceries.
Anyway this isn't a beer blog - back to the nail polish! It applied wonderfully - opaque in one coat! - but also a little awkwardly. Since I'm so new to gel polish, I don't know if maybe all gel polish is thicker than I'm used to, or if mine was too cold after sitting on the doorstep for a few hours in 30-something degree weather. (I didn't use it until the next day, so it had been sitting inside for roughly 24 hours.) Because of the thickness, I wound up with a couple of thinner spots and a few bulges on my nail where the polish was laid on extra thick. I don't think you can really see them, but I'm at least vaguely aware that they're there when I rub the surface of my nails. (Which I did a lot. Because I was obsessed with how smooth and sturdy they felt with the gel!)
The day I painted this mani was completely overcast, and because I no longer have a mani-cam light setup, I took the first set of photos using natural light diffused through the doorwall. The holo effect didn't really show up, but there was a very nice sparkle to the polish.
A few days later, BOOM! the sun came out, and so did the holo sparkle that we all know and love!
(If it looks like there's a faint hint of an ombre going on in the above photo, that's because I got Extreme Blue oVertone under my nails when I dyed my hair that weekend, and it stained the undersides of my nails a little bit! But it washed off after a few showers.)
I'm seriously SO obsessed with how long this lasted! The photos above and below were taken at about the two week mark. I didn't think to take more photos right before I removed it, because I did so at 9 pm on Memorial Day, but imagine exactly this except with another 3-5 millimeters of growth. After just over a whole MONTH, the only reason you could tell it wasn't a fresh mani was because of all the visible growth at my cuticles. And my nails felt so strong - indestructible, even. I've probably mentioned on the blog a couple of times how my right-hand index and middle finger nails peel really badly, right? The gel held my layers of nail together securely enough that I was FINALLY able to grow the peeling out!!! I did cut all of the growth off so that I could nip the peeling in the bud once and for all. Hopefully this will be the end of the peeling!
Meet Me In Tahiti was the perfect shade to transition into spring (and unwittingly into early summer). I can't wait to try out the rest of the Jet-Setting Holo collection. I've particularly got my eye on that beautiful coral Party In My Flip Flops. Corals look really good on me, if I do say so myself! 😉
How have your nails been holding up during lockdown? Have you done any at-home salon replacements, or are your nails suffering without those blessed nail techs? Let me know in the comments!
