Le Chat Summer 2011

Good morning, Dear Reader!

I had some press releases from Le Chat in my Inbox, so I thought I'd show you the ones you might be interested in.

Available for sale tomorrow (with "Where???" being the eternal question...) is a Dare to Wear collection of mostly metallic nail polishes.  Sorry about the little pictures, they're all I have.

Dare to Wear Bling It On Collection

They're also doing a collection of neon soak off gel polishes for their Perfect Match line, as well as a handful of other colors.

Le Chat Perfect Match Neon Gel Polishes

Le Chat Perfect Match Gel Polish, New Shades for Summer 2011

That's just about all I have for you today, Dear Reader.  Until next time, love and nail polish to you!

EZ Flow The It List

Good afternoon, Dear Reader!

I've been neglecting you because I've been neglecting my nails, I'm sorry.  I just wasn't up for dealing with another long removal and redoing this fake tip until I absolutely had to, and today I had to.  The old mani was nine days grown out and had a chip near a cuticle because I decided to tidy up my cuticles while taking a scalding hot bath a few days ago, and a bit of the gel came off when I did, so they weren't really looking too good.  Early this morning I got a call to set up a second interview for a position I really (really, really, really) want, and it's tomorrow morning, so the time had come to redo my nails.

The removal of the old mani was long again.  I did some more hunting for tips online and saw people say that the remover works better than acetone, so I used the remover that came packaged with it, but it was still pretty bad.  Since the Nubar removal was the easiest, what I did this time was use Nubar Gelicure products for nail prep, base, and sealer, and just the EZ Flow color gel in the middle.  This is my third time time using EZ Flow color gel, and I find that it shrinks in application quite a bit - both times before were with the whole EZ Flow system, so it doesn't seem like product incompatibility would be the problem here.  I worked around the shrinkage as well as I could, and the whole application, including one sculpted tip, was finished in under forty-five minutes (that's excluding the removal of the old one).

I went over a few options I had for what color to use this week (pretty easy since I don't have a ton of choices), and I found one I'm content with.  I considered a nice French, but vetoed it for this particular interview because it's a little on the girly side - the job's an IT team lead role, and girly just doesn't cut it.  I considered going with just clear since my nails are white enough to do that now, but I'm never comfortable with that and it would be distracting to me, and that thought led me to just wear something I'd be comfortable and confident in, which was a darker shimmery red from EZ Flow called The It List.  I know it's a bit bold, but I'll still be very understated overall - my clothes are the dressy IT choice of a charcoal skirt and a black sweater.

EZ Flow The It List Soak Off Color Gel

Looks like I got some towel lint on there after I washed my hands when I finished, so we'll all have to pretend we don't see that.  Otherwise, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out - it's familiar, not especially attention-grabbing, and so I'll be at ease wearing it.  The last thing I want to be thinking about for even a moment during the second interview for a dream job is my nails, and that'll be easy with this.

So that's the update for now, Dear Reader.  Until next time, love and nail polish to you!

EZ Flow Secret Shopper

Good morning, Dear Reader!  Long time no see.

I never changed around that St Pat's manicure last week, so I didn't have pictures to show you - since it was somewhat poorly executed, I had a hard time with the idea of stamping a shamrock on one nail and taking a new picture to post.  It worked out well though - I had one interview that was on short notice, requested about two hours before the meeting time.  I was kicking myself for having it on, but it ended up that all I was committing to was a phone interview so it made no difference, but I had the moment of panic that taught me a lesson.

I also had a moment of panic last week about finding a new job soon.  While the last seven or so years of my life have certainly been full, I can tell you from my experience that six moves, including buying and landscaping a new house then selling said house at a loss two years later, two marriages, two divorces, and three job changes is packing far too many very costly events into way too condensed a time, and I'm pretty broke as a result.  I can afford the roof over my head through May if a few other bills slide the last month, and I have no safety net, so I started considering what could add up to an additional month's rent, and that's where the (temporary) new ads that showed up this week came from.  The Google ad that's been at the bottom of the post is there because some testing showed me that it also has another function I wanted, but it doesn't make real money.  The way it works is that I just sign up and tell Google generally where the ad goes, and once it's made a total of $100, Google pays out its earnings at the end of the month.  As it's been, I get a payment from them every 2-3 months (it varies depending on whether they're clicked, they rarely are).  I added the others in the hope that I'll reach the threshold and get a $100 check each month until I have a new job, at which time I'll very cheerfully remove them.  I'm really sorry to crap up the page with them, I absolutely hate adding ads, and I gave the explanation to make it clear that it was the act of a desperate woman.  A reader made the suggestion of adding a PayPal donation button instead, and while it would probably drum up a few bucks, I'd feel like I was sitting on the virtual corner hassling you with my virtual tin cup, which might make it difficult to live with myself, so the ads are here for the short term.

That got long!  The reason I started writing this was EZ Flow Secret Shopper, a really pretty light purple shimmery soak off gel.  I put it on after yesterday's IBD clear and green creme removal was tough - two 20 minutes soaks and a lot of chipping and buffing the last of it off.  It seemed like a good time to try EZ Flow, although both brands are owned by AII.  Doing the fake tip went a million times better, which was good.  This time I put the real time and effort into getting the form just right, which made actually making the tip easy. It took maybe ten minutes total, but I doubled the time I needed with my fear of using too much product - I made the fake tip so thin that it was too bendy to even file it, so I had to do another layer of gel and another three minute cure.  Then I did the color gel, sealed it with the Nubar Gelicure soak off sealer, and I have a manicure that's happy and Springy.

EZ Flow Secret Shopper Soak Off Color Gel

The color is a bit sheer and in the bright light the thinner patches show, but they don't show up in normal light.  In bright light, it's so sparkly that I hadn't noticed them before looking at this picture.  I'm pleased to point out the complete lack of super amateur Photoshopping to my cuticles - they've finally healed up, and foil will never touch them again.

I think that's just about everything I meant to tell you about today, Dear Reader.  Until next time, love and nail polish to you!   

Saint Patrick's Day Nails

Good morning, Dear Reader!

I didn't change my nails at all last week, so I didn't have any pictures to show you, but now I do.  I took off the French and changed to a St. Patrick's Day manicure, but had it not been for a little mishap, I think I'd have left the French alone for another week - it really held up well.  Here's the old one right before I removed it, on the eighth day of wear.

French Manicure on Day 8

See?  I think I could have gotten another week out of it with no troubles, but as I mentioned, there had been a mishap.  There have been just a few times through the years where I became so monumentally uncoordinated for one second that I set a chain of events in motion that resulted in a "What just happened?" as I assessed the damage when it was done, and the most recent of those was last week.  I had a break I've been growing out for a while on a nail on my right hand - I'd glued it and sealed it with gel, and it had stayed for a few weeks with no problem, then I had my moment.  I picked up a bottle of conditioner with my right hand, a bottle which requires a bit of force to dispense the product, and I somehow let the bottle slip a bit and it flew to the other side of the shower, breaking the repaired nail and clearing two shelves of stuff on its way.  The break was about halfway through,and I just taped it with masking tape until I felt like fixing it, which turned out to be a few days later after I broke it all the way off.  Since I'm on job interview alert, that really won't fly, so I fixed it.

I started with removing the French.  I'd mentioned glitter seemed hard to remove - I spent an hour and twenty minutes taking this off, with the last five being spent buffing off unremoved bits.  I used plastic (super cheapo sandwich bags) held with rubber bands to remove after that was successful last time, and that again was a lot easier to do and on my skin.  I just took out ten baggies, ten pieces of felt, and ten rubber bands, wet each piece of felt with acetone and dropped it in a baggy production line style, then put all ten on, and took was less than five minutes.  I waited twenty minutes after applying the last of the acetone until I checked the first applied and cleared off all the gel I could from each nail.  Not a lot came off, so I put fresh pieces of acetone soaked felt in the baggies and repeated the process.  This time more came off, but not enough, so I reapplied remover and waited another ten minutes.  I was then able to remove almost all of the remaining gel, and I was so sick of working on my nails that I just buffed off the rest.  I'm just grateful the local video store had Jackass 3 available to watch while I did this, or else I might have gone into a little fit of rage at the agonizing removal.  I'm also grateful that Johnny Knoxville is a teeny bit older than I am so I can pretend there's anything age appropriate about watching Jackass 3.

At this stage, I was an hour and twenty minutes into this and still had to do a repair and the new manicure, so I was getting drained.  For the repair, I decided to take a shot at my first sculptured gel tip, with extent of my prior experience with sculptured tips being a repair (singular) in the '90's using that Lee nail repair kit.  I'll admit I spent about the first ten minutes trying to figure out which part of the nail form went under the nail tip, trying to get the gel applied to it, then starting over.  I eventually managed to make the tip, which looks fine from the top of my hand, but I now completely understand why so many salons do acrylic, seal it with gel, and call it gel - using all gel was hard.  The gel kind of slowly settles, so it kept getting under the part where the form hit my nail.  It didn't move far, just about 1 mm, but all I had was clear builder gel for this so it looks kind of like those prehistoric mosquitoes encased in amber - it's kind of creepy to look at from the underside.  Anyhow, I finally finished that and did my Saint Patrick's Day manicure.

I'd decided to do green tips and some kind of accent nail, but hadn't settled on all the details.  Since by now, all I wanted in the entire universe was to be finished, I went with what I thought I could do on the first try and did green tips, and Irish flag accent nail, and I just left the rest clear.  I don't think I have ever seen my nails so white as they are now - previously, I could buff and whiten them, but they promptly picked up new stains as soon as I put on polish.  Since polish hasn't been on them in a while, they've stayed nice and white, so I seized the opportunity to wear clear.

My Saint Patrick's Day Nails

Sorry about the icky skin - my poor cuticles had just finished suffering through that removal, and are still at the tail end of healing from the cuts I got on them from using foil for removal.  This close up, and for about an hour after I finished the mani, I was displeased with it because I just ran out of steam when it came to getting the three colors for the flag perfect and the finishing buffing, so I did kind of a half-assed job on both.  However, this shade of green is really nice, and from a normal distance in person, my accent nail really gives the impression of the flag, so I accomplished what I set out to even though the picture's not one of my best.  For interview preparedness, I can put a neutral nail polish over it if I need to.

As for the fake tip, I'm really happy with it and it was completely worth the hassle - it feels just like the nail it's filling in for, even for typing.  I'd planned to just re-glue and seal the break until I broke the whole tip off, but once it was broken my choices were a massive chop (I've been growing the break out from about halfway down the nail bed, and it's just past the tip now) or a tip.  Chopping was low on the list since I just did a big chop, and I absolutely detest plastic tips (it's the same objection as to acrylic only more so - there's almost no feeling with a tip on), so taking a shot at the gel tip was my best choice.  Since it's made of soak off gel, I'll have to redo it each time I change the gel (a realization which almost made me cry when I finally finished this arduous process), but the fact is that I'm really bad at making a sculptured tip, so I don't have any business making one out of regular gel until I can make a good one.  I figure this will give me a few practice tries until I know what I'm doing, then I'll be able to use big kid gel and it'll stay on.

I'm still at the early stage of the learning curve for using soak off gel, which is making everything about using it far more painful than it will eventually be, but I just love the stuff, even with the occasional nightmarish removal.  Now that I'm seeing some of the benefits as far as staining, I'm a bigger fan than ever.

That's what I have tell you about this morning, Dear Reader.  Until next time, love and nail polish to you!  

The French Manicure

Good morning, Dear Reader!

Thanks for all the kind comments and the emails about the job thing - I really appreciate them.  I'll reply to all, but I thought I'd mention it explicitly since it seems a little empty the 30th time I respond with "Thanks," but it's not and the support really helps and is appreciated.

In hopeful anticipation of having job interviews this week, when I swapped out the soak off gel yesterday, I switched to a French manicure.  It sparkles, but is otherwise just a traditional French.  I haven't worn a French manicure in a while, but I recently saw a picture from a few years ago where my nails were about this length with a sparkly French and I liked how it looked.  In the days when I was an IT manager and unaware of quick dry top coat, my solution to a mid-week break or just not having a block of time available where I could change polish with it air drying between coats was to go to this super young (nineteen year old) manicurist who was exceptionally good, and I'd get a French because she was so skillful at doing them well.  She's apply the white, then go over each nail line with an acetone dipped brush to make the line perfect and very clean, and she was an absolute perfectionist.  I considered that and realized that I do like French manicures, but only with a pretty white tip with a really clean line, much cleaner than I can do freehanding with polish.  I thought I'd give it a shot with the gel and see how I did, and I'm pleased.

I read some tips before this application, as I'm finding out new things just by doing the gel.  One is that it's like polish with respect to variance in consistency - it's not IBD gel that's hard to remove, it's glitters, and cremes remove really easily.  I found a nail tech's site (that is, a site authored by a nail tech rather than one written for them)  with some tips, many of which seemed like they'd complicate the bejeebers out of it, but one I took was to disregard manufacturer claims about gel being self-leveling and to buff it before the sealer.  She also talked about some interesting techniques to manipulate the gel with partial curing, but I just bookmarked it since I'm not at that point yet.

For colors, I wanted a really white white.  I know a lot of people don't like super white tips with the objection that it looks fake, and while I completely agree that it looks fake, that doesn't change the fact that I like how it looks.  So I got a glittery IBD white called Sweet Nothings, and in looking for a pink discovered that IBD Antique Lace had the same glitter and went with it.  I applied the white first, covering the free edge to a few millimeters below the nail line, then I went back with a clean brush and scooted the edge into a straight line  working from the opposite direction, moving cuticle to free edge.  I did two coats, then filled in one of the pink, then one of clear gel, doing a quick cleanup by running the edge of a manicure stick all around each nail prior to curing each coat, and did the final three minute cure before buffing to smooth.  After buffing, I added sealer, cured again, and it's done.  Here, you can see that my lines turned out to be clean and sharp.

French Manicure with Lots of Glitter

I forgot to mention that I Photoshopped the heck out of cuticle injuries (which are looking grosser as they heal) out of consideration of your eyes.  Nothing of the nails or gel is altered, but I thought it was worth mentioning since I do such a rookie job of Photoshopping.  My middle and ring fingers were both cut at the cuticle the last time I used foil to remove soak off gel - after soaking in acetone my skin is displeased, and a scrape with a pointy edge of foil was all it took to slice it.  For the removal preceding this application, I used plastic wrap and rubber bands to hold the acetone soaked felt rather than foil and it was a thousand times easier to get on and to keep on.

So the manicure isn't perfect, but it ain't half bad for using a couple of new tricks, and without magnification it looks pretty good.  I don't really see altering this one too much other than adding a pattern to it here and there, so I likely won't have a ton of posts this week.  I just like how nice and clean a French manicure can look, and if it sparkles, I'll be content with it for a while.

That's the update on the nail front.  I have lots and lots to keep me busy this week, so I might miss posting a few days, but I'll be around.  Until next time, Dear Reader, love and nail polish to you!  

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!

 

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!  

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!  

My Impressionist Funky French

Good morning, Dear Reader!

After using a dotting tool for the dots I added to the chevron tips I showed you yesterday, I got to thinking that filling in my tips with just a bunch of tiny colored dots might be interesting.  I gathered about a zillion nail polishes that are Springy and opaque, got the dotting tool and a paper plate, and had at it (this was from a few days ago, so the gap at the cuticle's small).

As I was placing the dots, I thought it looked like an Impressionist's rendition of a Funky French, being characterized by bright color, open composition, and super tiny brush strokes.  Here's what I came up with.

Impressionist Funky French over Hot Pink Nubar Gelicure

I think under many circumstances, I could look at the finished manicure and say, "Yes, I see how that could be an Impressionist mani."  Unfortunately, I can't.  As I looked at the manicure after sealing it with top coat, I could think of one and only one think that's set apart by the use of bright colors and an ornately orderly multicolored edge, and that's folk socks.

The price I'm paying for reading too much Interweave Knits Magazine is that my brain now perceives my manicure in terms of socks.  That's an unexpected outcome!

I think we can all agree to pretend that this manicure is actually a deep, meaningful artistic statement, connecting an innovative 19th century Parisian art movement to the crafting traditions of the back hills of Appalachia.  I'll have to go ponder the meaning of existence for a bit to come up with something equally profound for tomorrow, so until then, love and nail polish to you!  

Nubar Gelicure Soak Off Gel Polish

Good morning, Dear Reader!

Today I have something a little different for you, something which I never thought I'd try: soak off gel polish.  I've seen various reviews in the year or so since OPI's Axxium and CND's Shellac made a splash, which had me interested enough to see what was out there and whether I was willing to try any of it.  Reviews on OPI's Axxium seemed to all have at least one person chime in with a complaint saying that her otherwise strong nails were damaged by the removal, which made me afraid of soak off gel in general, and the Shellac reviews said that product came off well, but I've never had success with CND products for natural nails, so I took that as hope for soak off gel and moved on.  Several other brands who do mainly fake nail stuff had a good selection of colors (IBD, EZFlow, Harmony,...), but  I settled on Nubar's Gelicure as the one to try just as a personal preference - my experience with their products is that they're kind to my nails (the only acrylic patches I've ever been able to grow out and to remove without damage were with Nubar acrylic), and I trusted that it would really soak off.

I did do a test of the gel removal before applying the gel polish (I trust no brand that much!), and I found that I could remove the gel with relative ease in 10 minutes, and that it pretty much fell off when I touched it after 15.  The dissolved gel is really weird - it's like older rubber cement got kind of wet.  I know that's an odd description, but I'd bet if you tried this you'd see exactly what I mean.  Anyhow, knowing that I could take this stuff off when I wanted to, I went ahead and applied it.  I've never applied gel before (heck, I've never seen it in person before), so it's not the best application ever, but it shows some real potential for the product for me.  I'll show you the picture of my Gelicure mani first, then tell you how I put it on and why I'd want to.

Nubar Gelicure Soak Off UV Gel Polish in Hot Pink

It's not too bad for a first shot at gel, I think.  The trick thing about it for me was that gel polishes say that they go on like polish, but I discovered that's true only in the narrow sense that they're both applied out of a bottle with a brush.  What was strange to get used to was the fact that after touching the product to my nail, I had all the time in the world to get it perfect since it doesn't cure at all until it's under the UV light.  There are a couple of preparatory steps for the nails (primer and a bonding agent), then I applied the clear base coat gel.  I made it as thin as humanly possible and cured it.  Then I added color, also doing the super thin coats, but employing a kind of a completely rookie way to go about it.  I was applying as thinly as I could, then wiping the brush off in the bottle and then using it to take a little off each nail.  That just meant I put the gel polish on too thinly and needed more coats.  The last step was to seal it with top coat sealer and cure the sealer.  For curing, the directions said two minutes under the UV light to cure each coat, I gave it three for each just because that was how the light was set and I didn't want to mess around with it.

Why would I possibly want to wear a colored gel polish that doesn't come off for weeks, you ask?  Lots of reasons...

The gel functions as an overlay, and my opposition to overlays in the past has been functional rather than aesthetic - my experience with having acrylic overlays for a few days and acrylic patches here and there shows me that they diminish sensation in my nails, and when your nails do a lot of the work that fingertips do for people with short nails, changing how they feel doesn't work well.  Acrylic isn't that durable for color changes, either.  With this gel, my nails have as much feeling and as much "give" (like bending a little when pressed) as without, it just takes a little more pressure, and I can polish at will.

The gel keeps pigment from ever touching my nails, which would seem to indicate that there's hope to completely and permanently grow out the stains on my nails.  In applying the gel, I was instructed to wrap my tips with base, color, and sealer, and with the edges protected my guess is that tears and breaks won't happen and that my nails might wear evenly (typing makes all of them wear more on the pinky side of the nail).  I have no ambitions to give Lee Redmond a run for her money even though I'm a fan, it would just be nice to quit having my blog and photo accounts look like a flip book of nails growing and getting chopped.

As for the monotony of wearing one color, that's not a problem.  I'm sure of that because I applied the gel on Saturday, although yesterday's polish is the only picture I've shown with it on.  I polished and top coated over the gel and later used acetone remover (not recommended by the manufacturer!) to remove the polish, and the gel looks exactly like it did before the polish.  So polishing over gel works, and I really like the idea of having the base for nail art ready all the time.  I can embellish the gel polish with Konad or whatever and just remove it later.  That's handy.  In fact, here's my first shot at adding a bit to the pink.

Nubar Hot Pink Gelicure Soak Off Gel Polish with Chevron Tips in Nail Polish

That's just black and white nail polish with top coat added to the gel, and I can see doing stuff like this for a while before getting bored.  The shine on the gel is really amazing, too, and it feels like a new plastic coating it's so smooth.

Today, on my fourth day of having the gel on, it looks like it'll last me about a total of a week before it starts getting too grown out looking.  Test removal and this application took just about an hour, which really isn't too much effort for me once a week - that's exactly what my routine was for about twenty-five years to change a manicure without quick-dry top coat.  With the ease of application and removal as well as all of the benefits of soak off gel, I really think I've been converted to it.  Now all the people who've asked me about fake nails, to whom I've consistently and emphatically replied "Never!!!", can mock me for wearing gel all they wish - I have it coming.

So that's the recap of my four-day experience with Nubar Gelicure and my first with soak off gel.  Before I do the complete removal and next application, I'll take a new picture of the gel alone so we can all see the before and after of how the poor mistreated gel holds up.  Until next time, Dear Reader, love and nail polish to you!