Soak Off Gel vs Nail Polish

Good morning, Dear Reader!

I decided to get over myself and deal with uneven nails for a week for many reasons, the greatest of them being that I wouldn't like myself as much if I were so high maintenance that I'd change it right away.  I've also been enjoying have sparkling pink nails far too much to interfere with them, so I figured that today I'd show you some better pictures of IBD Be Mine and do a rundown of what I see as the advantages and disadvantages of the soak off gel (or gel polish) as compared to nail polish from my current newbie point of view.  I'm sure in a month I'll have even more opinions, but it seemed like it might be useful to do now as well.

When I took pictures of Be Mine on Saturday, I wasn't yet over myself or my uneven nails enough to take the seventeen trillion different pictures it took to get a couple that are color accurate and show the cool glitter, but I am today.  I didn't want to sell this one short because I really fell in love with it when I saw a color dot on IBD's site.  It's in a Valentine's Day set called Kiss and Tell with three other colors for $25, but after doing some heavy-duty searching, I found it for $9 shipped, which was reasonable enough to try it.  So far, I'm thrilled, but since it's pink glitter in a pink base, that's predictable.  It still took two pictures to give you a fair look.

IBD Soak Off Glitter Gel in Be Mine, Accurate for Base Color

IBD Soak Off Glitter Gel in Be Mine, Better View of Glitter

It seemed like it might be handy to have gel pictures on the same page as the pros and cons for visual reference, but since we're all really clear on what nail polish looks like, it didn't seem necessary to put a picture in for that.  To compare them, I'll just start at the start, and my use of the word "gel" refers to both soak off gel and soak off gel polish.

• Nail Prep: gel carries two extra steps, application of primer and bonder.  Otherwise, it's the same as for polish, just filing, cuticle care, and cleaning up, but as we see this week, errors in filing aren't as easily corrected with gel since breaking the seal on the gel kind of defeats the purpose of wearing it.  I prefer nail polish for this part.
• Application: nail polish is much, much faster.  For me, neither is easier because a consequence of the slower pace of gel application allows for greater care to be taken, which makes it easier.  Mistakes with gel application can largely be corrected before curing, with the exception of the thing giving me a hassle, perfectly even sealer that doesn't touch any skin, applied with a nail polish brush.  It's so shiny that it's difficult to tell that it's uneven, and in both gel applications I've flooded one corner of one cuticle with sealer.  Next time, I'll apply it with a gel brush and that may solve that.  I prefer the outcome of gel application, but my attention span strikes again making it difficult for me to wait for things to cure between steps, so as far as the actual process of application, I prefer nail polish by a lot.
• Wear: here, gel very obviously is preferable.  My Gelicure Hot Pink lasted only six days with zero wear showing  (chips, worn edges, and break in the seal) because the outgrowth bothered me.  One of these days I'll have the nerve to commit to wear one until there's a chip.
• Appearance:  gel's a clear winner to me because of the finish - it's really much more shiny than polish can be.  The Be Mine manicure pictured above is finished with a sealer not as shiny as last week's and it's on its third day.  Even at that, it's shinier than polish with Seche Vite or Diamont an hour after applying it.  I think the fact that I can say that when the gel's a heavy glitter with one super thin coat of sealer is pretty impressive - it would take a ton of top coat to smooth out that much glitter in a polish.
• Protection of Nails: protecting my nails has always been just as important as appearance with wearing nail polish.  My nails break almost immediately if they're bare, and polish does a decent job of keeping them okay.  Gel, however, does an amazing job.  In addition to not breaking, my nails aren't wearing down in their usual spots from everyday life, and this is the first time that has ever happened.
• Removal: nail polish is way easier for me.  The biggest complaint I have about soak off gels in general is putting the stupid foil on my nails, it's just such a ridiculous hassle.  If I'm going to be adult and reasonable, I'll admit that it's a weird annoyance and it's not really a big deal, but either way, polish is far easier.  There's also the fact that in trying a new to me brand (IBD) and a new to me product (soak off gel in pots rather than a polish bottle), I am concerned about whether it will come off, which simply isn't an issue with polish (I always know that even the scariest glitter will eventually come off).
• Other: I had a slightly odd experience with the IBD gel over the weekend - late Saturday afternoon, my nails started to feel a little too tight for my nails beds.  Not painful or bad, just like they were about three pounds to heavy for the jeans they wore to a good Italian restaurant where they loaded up on pasta.  It's gone now, but was odd.  The other thing worth mentioning for me is the convenience of gel as a base for nail art - I find I'm willing to spend 20 minutes decorating, where if I have to apply a polish base I'm far less motivated by the time I'm able to finish it, and there's also the benefit of unlimited do-overs with gel as the base for nail art done in polish.

That's just about all that I can think of that has occurred to me thus far in the grave matter of soak off gel versus polish, Dear Reader, so I suppose I'll just wrap it up.  Until next time, love and nail polish to you!

 

Born Pretty Store and my First Freehand Nail Art

I received a few items from Born Pretty Store a few weeks ago to review. You've already seen some of the Bullion put to use and I'll cracking out the rest of the amazing nail art supplies in good time. Here are the goodies that I got....

I've wanted some of these tiny brushes for ages. I did buy a pack of nail art brushes on eBay but there are very few that are suitably teeny for painting designs like this on your nails and I'm actually using one of them to apply my eyeliner!!

This pack of 4 brushes is perfect for drawing anything you can imagine on your nails. They're small but easy to grip and each one is a different size so you can use the smallest ones for lining and the larger ones for filling in colours.

I decided to try my hand at roses, which are heavily inspired by (read: copied from) Marina at Forever The Ugly Duckling who does some really cute and imaginative, yet simple, freehand nail art which is what actually inspired me to have a go myself.

I started out drawing the outlines of the flowers then filling them in with the blue. Then I went over the outlines again to emphasise them since the blue kind of covered them over. Then I decided to add the leaves by doing the  same thing - outline, colour, outline again!

I'm really pleased with how it turned out and I'll definitely be doing more freehand nail art in the future if I can come up with any ideas! If that's something you guys would like to see?

I used:

Brushes from Born Pretty Store

Barry M Berry Ice Cream as a the base colour

Rimmel Black Satin to outline the flowers

Beauty UK Neon Blue to fill the flowers

BYS Fern for the leaves

Top coat of NYC

Disclaimer: The nail art brushes were sent to me by Born Pretty Store for review. Everything you read here is my honest opinion.

IBD Soak Off Color Gel Be Mine

Good morning, Dear Reader!

I decided to change colors yesterday, at the end of six days of wearing Gelicure Hot Pink.  I took pictures right before removing Hot Pink yesterday, but I can't find them anywhere!  You'll see as today's tale unfolds, I was completely out of sorts yesterday.  That means the last picture of wear is from Day 5, and that was yesterday's picture.  There was no chipping or wear at all, and even the gel on the edges of my nails from wrapping my tips had no wear, but outgrown polish has always been distracting to me so it had to go.

Removing Hot Pink wasn't bad at all.  The worst part of it was getting the stupid foil to stay on my fingers.  At one point, I got all mad, took them off, swore a whole lot, then redid them so they'd stay on.  What a frustrating expenditure of effort!  The remover stayed on for ten minutes, and when I checked the first nail it looked like it might need more time.  I used an orange stick to scrape down the middle of the layer of gel, and that made it come off.  By the time I removed the last foil a few minutes later, the gel fell off in one big piece.

After the swearing episode, I should have taken a break after removing the old gel, but I didn't.  At the time, tidying up the shape of a few of my nails using the coarse grit sandpaper-y file I had handy to break the seal on the Hot Pink before putting on the remover seemed like the wisest choice, so I did it.  Quickly, and evidently without comparing the length of nails I'd filed to those I had not.  Then I applied new gel, which complicates matters further, you'll see.

I used an IBD Soak Off Gel that came in a little Valentine's Day pack of four shades called Be Mine.  It's a pink base with pale pink and hot pink glitter.  I went through the preparatory steps of applying primer and bonder, and then the gel.  I did one thin layer of clear before two really thin layers of the color.  This kind comes in little pots rather than being packaged like nail polish, so I used a gel brush to put it on.  The gel brush is a squared off, somewhat flattened, short brush, and the gel itself is WAY thicker than Gelicure.  Gelicure's about what I'd expect gel to be, but the pot kind is more like cookie dough that spreads out.  The down side to that is that in mixing it up before application it's hard to avoid air bubbles, but the up side is that it's really easy to control.  After applying the gel, I put on a coat of IBD Intense Sealer, one of two recommended ways to finish the manicure.  Intense Sealer is not soak off, so I'll have to file it off in order to remove the gel under it.  Here's the finished manicure, with better and thinner application than last week.

IBD Soak Off Color Gel in Be Mine

Want to hear the thought process that resulted in that markedly shorter ring nail and misshapen pinky nail?  After my "it was a good idea at the time" filing, I considered filing all of them, and thought, "Eh, no one will notice."  In what universe is that not noticeable?  It reminded me of something I hadn't thought of in a long time.

When I was a kid, my mom always wanted a dog.  She'd wanted one since she was a kid really, but once my sister and I weren't tiny was the her first opportunity to have one.  She'd try to convince my dad that "the girls really need a pet," which would result in a trip to Fish Emporium with my dad and a toiletside ceremony a few weeks later.  When I was 8, she finally just told him she was getting a dog and went through a process of interviewing breeders until she found the perfect dog, a black miniature poodle.  She'd hold him in her lap at night and pet him, and she especially loved his long, flowing ears.  One day when I was 9, after we'd had him about a year, my sister and I were home alone after school (that was normal), and she decided we should play Hair Salon with the dog.  I was a nervous little kid, always the one standing ten feet back saying, "I don't know if this is a good idea..." and she was the adventuresome kind with bad ideas that could and did result in injury and/or property damage, always answering my concerns with, "It'll be fine."  This case was no different than any other...

I was willing to participate in Canine Hair Salon only as far as having an arm around the poor dog to keep him calm.  She got the scissors and gave the dog a little trim on one ear.  But that made him uneven, so she had to trim the other.  I checked her work, and now the first ear was longer.  After a few rounds of that, she got serious, did it right, and had me check.  The dog's ears were finally even, but each looked like a little puffy triangle with the third point at the middle of the dog's ears, like his stylist had put a Dorothy Hamill  twist on traditional poodle ears.

Triangle Hair

My response at first was to laugh, then of course I got nervous.  I said, "Mom's going to be mad."  She answered, "Mom won't notice."  Even nine-year-old me knew that was ridiculous, and after I finished my nails and saw the uneven ones (there are two others on my right hand!), I had a moment where I simultaneously felt like my sister as she sat there looking me dead in the eye and telling me my mom won't notice that she just Dorothy Hamilled the poodle and skeptical nine-year-old me knowing there's no way that's going to fly.  The lesson I take away is that if there's something I knew was a ridiculously stupid idea thirty years ago, it's likely that it will be at least as stupid today.  Hence my nails.

The complication here with the sealer is that if I file to even things out, I'll break the seal.  If the sealer were soak off, I'd just do that and apply a second coat of sealer to the whole thing, but this sealer has to be filed off and I made an effort to keep it very thin, so a second coat of it isn't something I'd be up for.  Just filing and leaving the seal broken would normally be a reasonable approach likely to shorten the life of the manicure, but I don't want to do that since it would be an unfair (well, useless) product test if I did.  So my options are change it or live with it.

I'll probably have to change it just so I don't have to cringe and say, "WTH, Self?" every time I go to take a picture this week.  I can't believe I Dorothy Hamilled my nails!

That's about it for the State of the Nails and today's storytime, so until tomorrow, love and nail polish to you!  

Olive You, Leopard!

I love weird leopard print color combinations, and this one is no exception. Its colors remind me of green olives with the pimentos in them, sitting in the jar waiting to accompany some poor schmuck's gin. 

I can't take credit for this color combination, to be honest, I saw a rug that had the pattern, and I adored it (I wish I had bought it!) so I snapped a picture knowing that it would find its way onto my nails at some point.  I love the 'gradient' (ok not so much a gradient as a color change) from the tip of the nail to the cuticle edge.  The color of the orange shows up really red in the pictures, but its more of a burnt orangey red in real life. I think someone needs to develop one of them so I don't have to mix it. (think Essie Alligator purse, but more orange than red)

Anyway, on to the nails- for now all I have are pictures from the iPhone, because my camera is MIA right now. Hopefully I find it tonight, so I can take a picture of them with a real camera before they get destroyed by acetone. :)  

I used American Apparel California Trooper> as a base, with American Apparel MacArthur Park for the green, and a mix of Essie Alligator Purse and China Glaze Life Preserver for the orange. Topped it all off with 2 coats of Seche Vite top coat.

Plate XL A - The Puzzle

Good morning, Dear Reader!

My Gelicure mani is still hanging in there, so I'm still changing it around to keep it interesting.  For yesterday's variation, I brought out the XL plates and looked for something to do in white, and I chose the puzzle pieces tip pattern.

I stamped that in Konad white, but it still looked a little plain, so I hunted down some nail art pens to fill in a few of the pieces.  I added Color Stay top coat and Poshe, and this is what it looked like when I was finished.

Stamping Plate XL A - Puzzle Pieces and Nail Art Polish

I really like how this one turned out, and to be honest, I was surprised to see a few tiny smudges in the nail art polish when I was selecting a picture - I can't see them even when I'm looking for them.

What I'd forgotten about changing color once a week is how much I hate it when it looks grown out.  Yesterday was the five days of wear, and I was reminded by my own annoyance that it's always around the fifth day of a manicure that it starts to bug me with the line at the cuticle.  However, the soak off gel has otherwise been so painless that I'm going to let it slide until tomorrow.  Other than the giant gap, it looks just like it did right after I applied it.

That's today's variation on the Hot Pink theme, so until next time, love and nail polish to you!  

♪♫ I don't blame you, it's what I love you for...

I'm super tired today so it's just a quick post. I sorted out my hair - decided to dye it Auburn and it's turned out really nice. Still patchy in places but that can be passed off as highlights!

(Pete Lawrie - All That We Keep)

Konad Plate: M54

Base Colour: Franken

Konad Colour: W7 - Black

Top Coat of NYC

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