Back to shellac – Tropix mix

In preparation for my holiday I decided to re-apply Shellac to my nails, which should hopefully last me the three weeks I am away.

I wanted to go for a neutral but bright colour to suit the weather. The salon I visited had a few swatches but two points worth bearing in mind when selecting your colour. The first is that the bottle looks nothing like the colour and the second is that the majority of swatches are done on the clear nail wheels, which again are not representative of the colour since they don’t take into account the colour of your nailbed. 

The colour I chose is a mix of colours Tropix and Ice Coral, with two coats of each applied. Tropix is a very bright orange/coral shade, adding Ice coral on top makes the shade completely different and tones down the brightness, the colour has a sheer finish and adds what looks like shimmer to the tropix colour, which is more matte.

I added the second coat to tone down the colour further and ended up with a nice peach-coral shade and finally the top coat gives the amazing shine, which was my favourite feature of the manicure last year. I have pictures of how well the manicure grew out last year and I expect this to be exactly the same.

My address is Hollywood

So I finally removed my shellac nails. On this occasion I had them on for over 3 weeks with no chipping occurring at all, but my nails were very long and I was so so bored of the colour!

I started by just soaking my nails in nail polish remover (acetone) and when it looked like the polish was coming away from the nail using an orange stick to remove it by gently scrapping away. This took a long time as you can imagine so I decided to replicate the salon manicure by soaking cotton pads in acetone and wrapping these around my nails and leaving them for about 10 minutes, until the polish started to lift. After all the polish was removed, I buffed all over the surface of my nails and filed them down a lot!

For this week I chose the newest of my auto-delivery OPI colours from QVC.

French Quarter For Your Thoughts lacquer (grey)

Plugged-In Plum lacquer (purple)

My Address Is Hollywood lacquer (rose pink)

The shade is from the 2011 autumn collection, “My address is Hollywood” and is a great transitional shade in my opinion. It is a pink-peach with a subtle gold shimmer. The polish dried very quickly and went on well, with one coat enough to get full coverage and a good finish.

My major complaint with polish is that within 3 days whole sections of the nail polish peeled off. I am hoping with the use of a different base coat this won't happen and that the quality of the nail polish isn't so poor. Needless to say this is not what I would expect from a brand like OPI, so I am hoping the other two polishes give a better first impression.

Shellac manicure day 14 update

Two weeks of suncream, oils and chlorine and how did my Shellac manicure do?

Amazingly! This is day 14 and as you can see there is minimal chipping to speak of. The only thing is a huge amount of regrowth which cannot be helped, but looks much better than the usual regrowth and chipping combination that can occur when you are too lazy to remove your polish. The colour was perfect for my holiday and matched with a lot of outfits really well. That impressive shine also lasted throughout the time which is quite easily my favourite property of the polish.

In the first week the manicure was faultless, only by day 6 did regrowth start to become visible.

By day 10, I started to see what looked like lifting at edges. I actually visited a castle on this day and was climbing up the dodgy steps and noticed that there was a small chip but I think that this may have been from brushing against the stones. Having said that the shellac did a good job at strengthening my nails and protecting them against breaking which I am sure would have happened from the way I had been treating my hands.

I decided to reapply a second time just to compare regrowth as well as to observe how to take it off correctly so I can attempt to do this at home and then report back on how easy that is as well as determine how using the polish has left the condition of my nails.

The colour I opted for this time was “tutti-fruti” another beautiful shiny colour of pink with a hint of purple which shows up really well in the pictures. What I noticed this time was that the manicurist set some bubbles into the polish, which is frustrating when you know you have to look at that for at least two weeks!

Hot chillies, I’ve been shellac-ed!

First off, how do you like my attempt at a creative title? With my holiday approaching I decided I would treat myself to a nail treatment in the form of Shellac nails.

Briefly, the Shellac system uses a special type of polish which is part polish part gel I believe and which promises to last for 14 days without chipping. The polish is applied to natural nails in a series of steps, just as you would with any other polish. First a base coat, followed by two coats of colour and finally a top coat. Between each step the polish is set under a special UV lamp for between 30 seconds and 2 minutes. The end result is super glossy nails which are completely dry. I did not quite believe this at first and found myself being all delicate and trying not to touch them for fear of smudging. I have never had gel nails before, but this doesn’t feel like regular nail polish and also does not feel like a thick layer like false nails.

It took about 35-40 minutes to shape my nails and apply the polish with all the steps. There are 24 colours to choose from in the range so far and the salon I went to even showed me examples of some colours layered to give different looks. 

The colour I chose was ‘hot chillies’ a beautiful red/pink with shimmer. I tried to go for something unlike that I own, although this does reminds me of OPI ‘guy meets galveston’ which is more sheer and does not contain shimmer. I love the colour and the shine is incredible and unlike any other polish I have seen.

For a hand manicure with Shellac applied I found the cost is usually around £30-35. The salon I went to offers the service of just tidying up your nails and applying the polish for £22, which is what I opted for, but I am not aware of other salons which offer this which is a great option if you take care of your nails yourself or would just like to save some money.

I’m going to keep track of how well this polish performs and post an update when I return. I am told that chlorine and suntan lotion won’t affect the polish and all I will get is some regrowth so be sure to check back in two weeks for the update. If you have already tested out shellac nails, leave me a comment and let me know what you thought or even your blog post links so I can see what colours you opted for!