UberChic Jet-Setting Holo Gel: Meet Me In Tahiti

***Note: This is not an affiliate post.  I will not earn any commission if you click through and make any purchases.

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!

Spring-y Nail Art inspired by...

**I wrote this post way back in the spring, thus the spring-y colors and title!**

Today's post probably has the least interesting object to take inspiration from: a box of Kleenex!  I don't mean to say that the pattern isn't interesting; it's a very pretty box of tissues, and I'm quite happy with the way my design turned out, but... it's a box of tissues.  Not exactly something that usually springs to mind when I think of "artistic inspiration," y'know?

For some silly reason, I didn't take any pictures of this manicure in my standard poses, so this is the only one I have of all of my nails.  Oops!

The colors that I used for this design are: 6 Harts Polish "Blue Eyed Bunny" (pinkie), Above the Curve Nail Lacquer "Rockin' Robin" (middle finger), Zoya "Prim" (pointer finger), and Zoya "Zuza" (on my thumb, which I didn't even get a shot of!).  The white background on my ring finger is Salon Perfect "Sugar Cube."  (I don't have links for either of the first two polishes, because they were designed for a limited-edition indie polish collaboration box and those two colors aren't available individually.)

 

I really wanted to do another video tutorial for this design, seeing as it's been a long time since the last video I did, but I simply couldn't find an angle that I was happy with, so I settled for a photo tutorial!

1. I started with a white background, then waited an absurdly long time for the white to dry.  When using striping tape, you always want to make sure that the background color is completely dry, or else the tape will peel off your nail polish!  (Placing the tape was kind of a pain - I'm really regretting not having any nail vinyls!)

2-4. Once I got the tape lined up, I took a small nail art brush and gently dabbed on each color.  The lightest blue, the one right at the cuticle, is very sheer so I had to use two coats.

5. After painting on each color, I took the tape off, starting with the last piece of tape that I'd placed.  Unfortunately the tape pulled up a tiiiiny bit of the white, and at the base of my nail the tape actually broke, leaving some behind on the nail!  So I did my best to paint over the wibbly lines with my smallest nail art brush.

6. Add a coat of top coat after it's all dried thoroughly (to avoid streaks), and ta-da!  Always snap a close-up photo of your nail next to the inspiration. :)

What do you think of this design?  What's the weirdest thing you've ever taken inspiration from for nail art?  Want to see more photo tutorials, or want me to try harder to find a good angle for a video tutorial?  Let me know in the comments!  And if you're really aching for some different types of posts, be sure to give me your feedback here.

Finally, don't forget to enter my blogiversary giveaway, which you can find here!

Zoya's Color Lock System Review + Zuza

Some time ago, Zoya put a mini size of their Color Lock System on sale.  I don't even remember when or what the sale was exactly - though I think it might have been on Black Friday.  Anyway, it doesn't really matter exactly when and for how much I bought it, it just matters that I bought it and I'm here to review it for you!

The bottle of Remove+ that came with the mini system was actually 1 oz, but I'd used that up by the time I took this group shot.  

This 2 oz bottle was a sample sent with a large polish order. :)

For those who aren't familiar, the Color Lock consists of four parts: Remove+ nail polish remover and nail prep, Anchor base coat, Armor top coat, and Fast Drops quick-dry drops.  I decided to test out the system with one of Zoya's older colors that I recently acquired and have been dying to try, Zuza.

This post is going to be pretty wordy, so bear with me!

Remove+

Oh my gosh.  I love this stuff.  I love it so much that I spent $25 on an 8 oz bottle of it, when I usually spend about $6 on a 16 oz bottle of pure acetone.  So what's so great about this that it's worth the almost absurd price increase?  Well, the biggest thing is that it doesn't dry the crap out of my cuticles.  Since acetone evaporates so quickly, it dries out cuticle skin to the point that my nice, princess cuticles look like I just spent a week digging in rocky soil with my bare hands (minus the dirt).  A few drops of oil rehydrates them just fine and the extra step was never a big deal until I tried Remove+.  Somehow, whatever it is in the remover that hydrates my nails and cuticles doesn't prevent it from removing polish quickly and easily.  Also, it smells like lavender, which is much better than the chemical smell of pure acetone.

This is called Remove+ because it is also used to clean and prep your nails before a new manicure.  My normal process is acetone to remove old polish, oil for my cuticles, wash my hands, lotion for my hands, and then rubbing alcohol or acetone to clean off my nails.  With Remove+ I can pretty much skip straight from removing my old polish to lotion for my hands (especially since it's winter, ergo dry skin season) to Remove+ on my nails again.  Pretty neat.

Anchor

It's kind of hard to judge a new base coat AND a new top coat at the same time.  It's hard to tell whether a polish chip comes from a base coat that didn't bond well enough or from a top coat that didn't seal well enough, you know?  But I can definitely say that it applies very smoothly.  My usual base coat, ORLY Bonder, feels almost sticky while I'm applying it, even when the bottle is brand new.  This one is very smooth and thin enough to dry quickly but not so thin that it floods the cuticles.

I wrote the bulk of this post after removing the original test manicure.  In the days that passed when I didn't bother to edit in the photos, I spent a day on the town with just two coats of Anchor on my nails.  It held up fine, didn't end up feeling grimy, and didn't chip or peel or scratch.  So I'd say that this is a great base coat!

Zoya Zuza

Zuza is a beautiful mermaid's-tail aqua with a turquoise-gold shimmer.  Absolutely stunning.

Application is very smooth, as usual with Zoya.  It did feel a tiny bit on the thick side, but not so thick that it was hard to work with or avoided drying.  (It's worth noting that my polish collection lives right under a very drafty window, and it's winter - so the cold could be thickening all of my polishes a little.)  And it's very close to a one-coat wonder; I used two to be safe and to cover up spots that I'd missed on the first coat, but a more steady hand just might be able to get away with only one coat.

Since this is such a long post, I won't say as much as I normally would about this color and move on...

Armor

I'll give the same disclaimer here as I did in my matte top coats post: my life is very, very easy on my hands.  I don't have kids, I don't have a job or go to school, and I don't tinker around with any kind of mechanics.  The tasks that are hardest on my hands in my life right now are showering and cooking.

So, with that in mind, this top coat is on point.  I had on two coats of Armor for at least a week.  I didn't add any extra coats as the days wore on.  And I had minimal - and I mean minimal - edge shrinkage on day seven.  (Of course, I wrapped my tips with the color and with the top coat when I originally painted my nails.)  No visible cracks.  No chips.  No dents once it finished drying.  (More details on that in the next section.)  Zoya, I tip my hat to you on this one.  Good freakin' job.

For the record, I showered every day for seven days and cooked three times in the week that I tested this top coat.  Boom.

Fast Dry Drops

Application of the drops was fairly simple.  I angled my fingers downward and dripped one drop of the liquid onto my nail at the cuticle.  It's thin enough that one drop was enough to spread over my whole nail.

As for the success of the product... I'm not impressed.  I waited about five minutes after application and poked at my nail with an orangewood stick, and the polish was still very susceptible to puncture marks.  But what's neat is that the poke marks sort of shrunk out, like a memory foam pillow after you press on it.  I've never had that happen with a puncture mark in my polish before!

Anyway, one would think that after more than ten minutes, fast-dry drops would make polish dry as a bone, but it just didn't work for me.  Even hours after finishing this manicure, I was still able to poke a few dents into the polish - only these dents didn't shrink away.  Looks like I'll be keeping this step out of my regular manicure process.

(Side note: I'm totally bummed that I didn't avoid using the drops on a few nails per hand.  The best way to test the top coat's dry time would be to use it on its own, right?  Oh well.  I'll be sure to use the top coat again some time and throw in a note about its dry time.)

So, all in all, I highly recommend Zoya's Color Lock System!  Each item of the system is available for individual purchase, or you can buy the whole set.  It looks like the mini set is no longer available, and the full-sized set comes with two additional steps: a ridge-filling base coat and renewing drops meant to revive old, gloopy polishes.  Perhaps some day I will be able to review those for you as well! ;)

PS - be sure to enter my giveaway, which ends tonight (Friday 2/20) at midnight!

Kate's Birthday Giveaway!

My 23rd birthday is coming up in about a week.  This year, instead of getting presents, I'm going to be giving the presents to YOU!  :D

 That's right, in honor of my birthday I'm hosting my very first giveaway!  Woohoo!

For my very first giveaway, I'm giving away four colors from OPI's Nordic collection.  I wish I could afford to give away the whole collection!  I decided that the cheapest way for me to be able to swatch the colors and give away fresh, unused bottles was to buy the Little Northies box for myself, and purchase the full-sized polishes for you.  So, the prizes for this giveaway are: OPI How Great Is Your Dane, My Dogsled Is A Hybrid, My Voice Is A Little Norse, and Do You Have This Color In Stock-holm.  Just to be clear, the minis are not the prize here - the prizes are all full-sized bottles!  Oh boy!  (I did hold the full-sized bottles for the swatch photos, because mini bottles are frustrating to photograph.  Don't worry, my hands were clean, and I promise I painted my nails with my mini bottles!)

How Great Is Your Dane?

Dane is a lovely brown creme.  OPI describes it as a "cinnamon coffee" brown, and I'd say that's pretty accurate.  I originally bought it when the collection first came out with thoughts of painting a dark forest in honor of the Into The Woods film that's coming out soon(ish).  I also used this color in my Autumn-Colored Retro Dots tutorial.

Application is really good, though it's a bit uneven on the first coat.  A second coat evens it out completely, though!  The formula is a tiny bit on the thin side, which explains the unevenness - but it's not frustratingly thin.

Here it is with one coat of the glitter topper, My Voice Is A Little Norse.

My Dogsled Is A Hybrid

Dogsled is a great turquoise creme.  It's a bit muted, so it doesn't look out-of-season in autumn or winter.

Don't mind the band-aid on my finger - my cupboard handle attacked me and I lost.

The formula is wonderfully smooth.  It applied like a dream, even out of a mini bottle.  (Mini bottles have smaller brushes, which tends to make polish more frustrating to apply.)  Two coats for complete coverage, but you might be able to maneuver only one coat if you're very careful!

 Pictured with one coat of My Voice Is A Little Norse.

My Voice Is A Little Norse

Little Norse is a super-awesome glitter topper.  Silver holographic microglitters in a clear base = yes please!  I can see it looking amazing as snow on top of a white polish for a lovely winter manicure.  Or as stars on top of a galaxy mani!

 Out-of-focus to help you see the holographic shine!

It applies VERY smoothly - no glitter clumping or sticking.   I used one coat in all of the pictures.  I tried out two coats over Dogsled on my thumb, but I felt that it greyed out the color a bit too much.

This picture really doesn't do the sparkle justice, but from pinky to pointer finger I have it on top of China Glaze White on White, one coat of China Glaze Innocence (to simulate bare nail but cover up my yellowed nails), Zoya Ryan, and Nina Ultra Pro Black.  On top of the lighter colors it doesn't look special in this photo, but it looks AWESOME in person!

This is pretty textured.  I definitely recommend using a peel-off base coat with this.  I can still feel the texture of the glitter underneath two coats of Out The Door - which isn't necessarily a bad thing.  That's just a sign of a glitter that will be VERY frustrating to remove with remover and a cotton ball.

Do You Have This Color In Stock-holm?

Holy crap, this color photographed WAY BLUE.  Dark purples tend to do that on my camera, and I just don't get it - I use manual white balance and all other colors photographed pretty accurately...

Far, FAR more blue than it looks in person.

Anyway, Stock-Holm is a really nice, blue-violet creme.  Applies just as beautifully as the rest of the cremes in this collection - OPI is typically very good about their formula.  Two coats for complete coverage.

I messed with the colors to show the color more accurately.  This is still a bit bluer and darker than it is in person, but it's much closer.

With one coat of Little Norse on top.

Giveaway!!!

Now, for the giveaway.  Rafflecopter is pretty simple, but I'll explain the rules for any of you who may be unsure how this works.

First, I'm sorry to say that this giveaway is open to US residents only.  If you are international and know somebody who lives in the US, you can still enter and have the prize delivered to them if you win - just know that once the prize is delivered to your US friend/relative, it's their responsibility to get it to you.  I also can't ship to a PO Box, so you'll need to use a street address.

There are only two requirements to enter: tell me where you live (city, state), and give me an e-mail address so that I can contact you if you win.  I will not be saving any e-mail addresses, and I won't sell them to anybody.  You'll only get an e-mail from me if you win.  Doing both of these will enter you in the contest and earn you two entries.

If you wish to receive more entries in the giveaway, you can like and follow my various pages and profiles.  None of these are required for you to be entered in the giveaway, but they are highly encouraged as they earn you tons of extra entries!  Please note that anyone who Likes, follows, or subscribes to me for the duration of the contest and then unfollows after it ends will be noted and banned from all future giveaways.  If you don't want to add another page to your feed, just don't follow it and sacrifice the extra entries!  Additionally, I do not accept entries from giveaway accounts.  This term is pretty loosely defined across the internet, but I view a giveaway account as one with over 50% giveaway posts (not including giveaways run by you).

When the winner is announced, they will have 36 hours to respond to me.  If I don't get a response, I'll draw another winner - so check your e-mails!

The giveaway opens on Wednesday, November 19 at 12:15 am and ends on Wednesday, December 10 at 11:59 pm, EST.  I will announce the winner by 11:59 pm on Thursday, December 11.

All right, that's all I have to say.  Happy contest-ing and good luck!

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