Give us some Luxe, please!

Sweden is now terribly dreary, so let's add some light, or some Luxe - I used the lovely Annahita's nails for this manicure with one of Orly's SmartGels.

Sparkly and nice, but went on a bit sheer - I have used three to four coats here. Gold that lasts!

A lasting Ruby

I got the opportunity to try out a couple of the Orly Smart Gels, and here is one of them: the classic vampy Ruby.

Sex in a bottle - sex that lasts. Perfect red color. But is it the perfect gel color..?

This is four to five thin coats. I do very thin coats when I do gel manicures, to make sure it cures evenly. I think someone less particular than me would do three or four coats. So, a little thinner than I'd like a gel, but in its defense, it is a jelly like color. Though, that doesn't really matter when you're by your lamp, just wishing the color would even out and be opaque enough just a little sooner. Half an hour or so - per hand (yes, I'm overly neat).

I have definitely had more pleasant gel color applications than with Ruby, but once I was done with it and had cured my bad mood, I was very content. After all, it is the red color I've been looking for among gels for quite some time. Considering gels are long wearing enough to get an OCD polishing person like myself utterly bored in a few days, a deep red is classic and fabulous enough to make you slightly less sick of it. The photo above was shot the day after application, but as I write this four days later, it's still wearing strong, and this, I will tell you, is not usual for my thin, soft nails. No lifting, no chipping just yet, which makes me come to the conclusion that the Orly Smart Gels colors work well with my base and top, Harmony Gelish Foundation and Top It Off.

Have you tried any of the Smart Gels? Are you into the gel manicure thing?

This product was sent for review.

Swedish word of the day:
rubin -noun ruby
Precious stone.

Trying out OPI GelColor

With a promotional picture like the one below, how can you resist trying the product?

Said and done, I made an appointment with my favourite OPI nail tech and former neighbour Sara, who invited me home to try the GelColor system, which is the brand's product corresonding to wellknown compedators' systems such as CND Shellac and Orly Gel FX.

For the time being, Sara had a somewhat limited selection of colors, of which I chose Louvre Me Louvre Me Not, the shimmery grape purple that originally came out in La Collecion de France in 2008. I knew a darker, more versatile shade would be preferable, since I'm planning on wearing this for at least a week or until it just falls off.

Sadly, three out of four pictures are presented to you courtesy of my iPhone camera, because I was out of batteries for my compact (I know, I suck), but here they are anyway:

Spanking new manicure, hands posing on top of OPI's new UV LED-lamp. Photo by Sara.

In the last photo you can tell that the manicure is rather thick on some nails, especially on my index. This is due to two things: first that this particular shade went on pretty sheer and needed three coats (and UV gels are of course thicker than conventional nail polish), and my index has four color coats because both Sara and I were a bit unhappy with the color contour and experimented some with additional coatings of both color and topcoat.

Except for the color coats, the manicure consists of both gel basecoat and topcoat, each added and then cured under the LED UV lamp for 30 seconds, after initially preparing clean nails with Bond Aid.

A total of five coats per nail could perhaps be perceived as a little time consuming if you do this in a salon, but the curing is quick, and since I know Sara from before we just used the time chattering away. I also stayed behind for some more chatting while Sara did her own nails in the coral Cajun Shrimp, which, unlike Louvre Me Louvre Me Not, seemed to be very well pigmented and got opaque in two coats. Since Sara is an artifical nail fiend, no basecoat was required on top of her Axxium system nails, which gave her a GelColor manicure in three coats only.

The most problematic issue to handle while doing a gel manicure, is the fact that gel colors tend to shrink very fast, which means you have to stick your little fingers under the lamp lightning fast before that happens. To avoid bare tips, they should be sealed with color at the edges as well. You can still see a tiny bit of tip where the pigments managed to escape before I exposed it to the UV light, though this is mostly noticeable at extreme closeup, of course.

Now rest assured, I will report back on how well the GelColor manicure stays put on my pretty much impossible-to-lastingly-manicure thin, soft, bendy nails. More than 24 hours after application it's still as good as new. And it better stay that way, because I don't have the original Louvre Me Louvre Me Not polish to touch up!

Swedish word of the day:
komma -noun comma
This post seems to lack some, but hey...