At-Home Gel Manicure Review

First things first ... I have to put this out there.

I loathe -- LOATHE -- chipped nail polish.

I once almost drove my mother and sisters to the brink of insanity on a New York trip because I didn't have time to take off my nail polish before we flew out, and it kept on chipping and getting worse and worse and worse.  Here I was -- in the fashion mecca of the US -- with embarrassingly wrecked nails.  I literally could not stop obsessing (verbally) over finding the nearest place to get a manicure.  Finally Mom just had to tell me to quit it with all of the fingernail polish yappin'.  And a few hours later I got my manicure.  And then I was happy.

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And thus, the prelude to my at-home gel mani review.

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Before my Monday morning through Thursday night trip last week (to New York, coincidentally), I picked up this Gel Perfect 5 Minute Gel-Color Manicure set.  It normally is around $15 but it was on major clearance for about $4 (first clue).

I was all ... "Hey, this is like getting Essie for half-price -- how bad could it be?"

I normally wouldn't have gravitated toward the red color, but that's the one that was on sale, and I figured it was worth a shot.

The directions are pretty clear, but I read them three times because I was so nervous about screwing it up.  Basically, you start with a clear activator coat, and then you put on the color.  You repeat the process, making sure to clean your brushes (that solution is in the bottle on the far right below) so they don't get sticky.  You also have a folded paper towel ready to remove excess from your brushes.
 

It was pretty easy, and while I wasn't confident that they were completely dry in 5 minutes, they did seem dry enough. 

Here's a day-by-day collage of how the color stayed on my nails.  Sunday was day 1, and all of these pictures were taken at night.

You can see that after just one day, on Monday, I already had a few chips.  I had just arrived to Rochester and I still had several days left spent with the client.  It killed me to have chippy nail polish through the week but I wallowed through it for the review and also because I just really wanted to see how bad it would get in a matter of days.

Look, I know all nail polish chips, but this claimed to last for two weeks.  HA.

It also lost it's shine pretty quickly.

Sidenote: what cuticle oil do you love, because man, I have embarrassingly dry cuticles in these photos...

Removing the polish on Friday after work wasn't too difficult, but it certainly wasn't as easy as regular nail polish.  Ian got a good laugh at me with acetone-soaked cotton balls on each nail, wrapped up in tin foil.

I was really eager to get normal nail polish back on my nails.

So, am I going to trash what's left in the bottle?  Ehhh, probably not.  I'm a bit of a frugal lady, so I might give it one more go.  But this time -- I will give it a good coat of a good topcoat each day to keep chipping from occuring.

And for now, I've got a new love affair starting with a product I can't believe I'm just trying out for the first time ... Seche Vite!  Hello, lovah!