Adventures In Gel Polish

The Christmas just gone I asked for a gel lamp, as I was keen to see what it was like after discovering the joy of peel off base coats! I'm by no means converting entirely to gel, but I know it offers some advantages, like super shiny nails! I was also curious to see how it all works, and to try chrome nails with gel as it makes a smooth base.

Tonight I'm showing you my first attempt! To the left are the things I used on my much loved 'nail station'. OK perhaps I didn't 'use' the pineapple lamp for this, but it had to
be included!

So I started off with a peel off base coat so that I
could easily remove the gel. The peel off base
works well with thick polishes like gels or
glitters.

I used the Dance Legend peel off base
coat in nude.

The other items I used (shown above) were a gel lamp, gel polish and top coat, small 'gems' and a soft pencil for picking up the gems (from eBay).

I purchased a few cheap gels just to try them out, the colours I bought are from FairyGlo and the top coat is BlueSky.



One of the things I like about the gel/polish/peel off base combo is that if I'm peeling it off anyway I may as well stick things on it! So I decided to try adding gems on top of the gel. Below are some pictures of the result. I was so impressed with how shiny it was! I have some very shiny nail polishes but this really was incredibly shiny! I could see my reflection! You can see some trees outside the window on my thumb nails in the pictures below!

These didn't last long as I couldn't resist peeling them off (very unlike me!). I've included some pointers below the pictures about what I learnt.

• Use thin layers of gel - you want enough  polish to evenly cover the nail, but not too much as this can cause it to pool at the edges, and once it's cured it can't be undone! Because the polish doesn't dry until it's cured in the lamp you can always add a little more if there isn't enough on the brush.
• Stick on gems using tiny specs of polish - I placed the gems over a layer of gel polish, which because the layer hadn't tried ended up pushing it into the edges. Using small blobs would mean there isn't enough for it to pool into the edges of your nail.
• Cure your thumb nails separately - This probably depends how much polish you've used, but I found if I put my whole hand in the gel lamp the gel on my thumb nail shifted to the side a bit as my thumb was on it's side.