Polka-Dot Mani and Seche Vite First Impressions

Let me officially go on the record here by saying I am most definitely NOT a nail guru and I'll never claim to know much about that end of beauty. But I do love color very much and I have fun trying simple nail art. Plus I have an obsession with polka dots.

With all of this in mind, this is my Hello Spring! manicure. Pay no attention to my horrible cuticles. I know they need some TLC.

Base color: Sally Hanson Insta-Dri in Fast Fuchsia

Dots: Nicole by OPI Selena Gomez Collection in Hit the Lights

Psst, deal alert! I got both of these polishes this week for $1 each! The Insta-Dri was at The Dollar Tree and the Nicole was on clearance at Walmart with the rest of the Selena Gomez line and lots of other polishes for a buck. Some of the other polishes were 50 and 75 cents! All together I spent $4 on polishes, base, and top coat. More on the base and topcoat later.

Some "creative" shots. Blurry buggers though they are...

These are all on day 2 of the manicure. Man, look at those cuticles! Anyway, moving on. I used Seche Vite top coat and base coat for the first time here and as you can see, there's already tip wear. I was really surprised since it seems most bloggers prefer Seche Vite. In fact, blogger opinion was why I decided to try the brand. I had a $5 off coupon to Sally Beauty Supply and it just so happened they were running a special -- buy the base coat, get the top coat free. So for $2 I got to try both. Score! I was so excited to test them out. Both base coat and top coat applied as usual, with great drying time. 

I don't have a full review for you all just yet, but I can tell you that five hours after I did my nails I had considerable chipping on my dominant hand and tip wear on the other. This was after 1 coat of base, 2 coats of the main color, dotting, and one coat of top coat, which I wrapped. I did one load of pre-washed dishes with a dish wand, so my hands weren't fully submerged. Nothing else was out of the ordinary. I do my nails the same all the time, lately with the Colorstay Gel-Smooth base coat, 2 coats of polish, and either Sally Hanson Insta-Dri top coat or Orly Glosser top coat. I use the same wrapping method with those top coats as I did with the Seche Vite and it usually lasts about three days before I start to see wear at all, and a few more days before I have to remove everything. But with Seche Vite I get less than 5 hours? 

Anyone have any thoughts on this? If I'd done anything different besides changing brands, I'd say I've done something wrong. I'll give the brand another test run and update when I have more thorough results.

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