You Know You're Just Gelous

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Good Evening, folks!
Today, I'm going to rave about nail product that has single handedly changed the way I wear nail polish.
First, you need to know a bit about my previous manicure history. To sum it up:

Nail polish doesn't last on me at all.

The longest I've had a polish last was about... two days. It was butter London All Hail McQueen. I think something about the super glass-like formula makes it work for me but even during the second day, I experienced a lot of tip wear. Usually, I chip a mani within a couple hours. I don't even think I do anything extreme! I'm not scrubbing dishes or trying to scrape off sidewalks with my bare hands or anything.

Enter Gelous.
The greatest topcoat/base ever. I've used a lot of top coats and base coats, let's name a few- Seche Vite, Seche Clear, Seche Base, CND Stickey, CND Air Dry, Orly Top 2 Bottom, MAC Overclear, SpaRitual Multitasker, Deborah Lippman On A Clear Day.... and more. You get the point.
So with all the combinations of top coat and base coat, I still haven't been able to achieve a long lasting mani. I tried Gelous for the first time last month, it was about $5 at Sally Beauty. It's made by the brand American Classics which makes a whole line of polish treatments, but the one with the green cap is the one you want.
With Gelous on top of my color, I'm able to extend a mani to about three whole days without tipwear or chips, but I can push four days if I really wanted to.
I was able to extend this mani (my China Glaze Zombie Zest over Savvy Garland mani, shown here), and this is what it looked like after four full days of wear.

Considering that this is how my nails usually look within less than a day of wearing them, I think that's pretty amazing!
The only drawback is that Gelous isn't a fast dry coat. To remedy this, I apply Sally Hansen Insta Dri immediately on top of it. Base coat, three layers of color, Gelous and Insta Dri. That sounds like a lot of layers of polish, right? It is, but to me that's a small price to pay for pretty nails that can actually last a few days!

Have you tried Gelous? Do you use some other topcoat or base coat that you think is simply miraculous?

Products were purchased by me, for my own use.