Review: Revlon Colorstay Gel-Smooth Base Coat

I'm not great at nails. I mean, I try, but it gets frustrating when my polish chips off or peels off in sheets after a grand total of 2 days wear -- if I'm lucky! For a long time I didn't bother doing my nails at all because the wear time on me is ridiculous. I've pretty much always worked jobs that are hard on my hands, like serving, bartending, and for the past three years I've been co-owner of a very small house cleaning company. My poor hands take abuse at work, then I come home and do everything a mother of two needs to do to keep the home running. So as a result I haven't done much with my nails except curse them for sucking so much (thin, peeling PITAs that break easily) and curse myself for having craptastic manicure skills (filing sets my teeth on edge so I'm lazy about it and my cuticles are a hot mess). But the past 8 months or so I've really been trying. The first time I got 4 days wear out of a polish I almost threw a parade.

Oh little did I know! 

I read about this Colorstay Gel-Smooth Base Coat Longwear Nail Enamel being great, but I was skeptical. I mean, obviously these people don't know my nails or my life. I bought it anyway -- what can I say? Hope springs eternal and all that. They were right; this stuff is AWESOME.

It smooths ridges, protects nails from staining, and just look at this picture! This manicure is 8 days old! Whaaaaaat!?!?!?

Not too shabby for 8 days, right? There's some unavoidable tip wear, but it isn't too awful. The new growth and ugly broken nail (ouch, BTW) on my pointer finger are the worst of it, but I'm still really impressed.

Unrelated to the base coat, I wanted to mention that this is the first time I've ever had so many compliments on my polish, which was pretty cool! I used the Colorstay base coat, Julep Nail Color in Meryl, Color Club Professional Nail Lacquer in Snow-Flakes, and Orly Glosser (on clearance at Marshall's for $4.99) as a top coat. I wish the holo flaky showed up better here, but you get the idea from the bottle. I'm absolutely loving this Color Club polish -- and it was on clearance with a red polish for $3.99 at Sally's. Score!

I love this color combination, but I'm definitely ready to change it up now that I've done my due diligence with the base coat. If it wasn't for the growth and my boredom with wearing the same color too long, I could even stretch this manicure a couple more days.

Price: $4.99 at Walmart and Target, and around $7.99 at drugstores