*This is NOT a sponsored post.
As an incurable DIYer, I very rarely go to the salon for a manicure. I’m rough on my hands, so nail polish only lasts about a day before they start looking janky. I figured I was always destined to be an un-polished gal.
My friend Shelley at the House of Smiths told me that I just HAD to try a gel manicure. It costs more than a regular manicure (it’s around $70 where I live), but my nails looked fabulous for a week and a half and sometimes up to two weeks. The manicurist brushes a special polish on your nails and you cure it under the UV lights for about a minute. The polish was instantly dry. Instantly! Plus, since the polish is cured (aka hardened), it’s not as delicate as regular polish. I could be a rough DIYer AND have pretty nails. But, with two young kids and weekends filled with projects, its hard for me to find the time to go to the salon. I needed to learn how to do gel nails myself at home, so I put that on my growing “things to learn” list.
In the last month or so, these new Sally Hansen Gel Salon Gel Starter Kits have been popping up on store shelves. Have you seen them? They are available at CVS, Walgreens, Target, Walmart, Ulta…pretty much everywhere. The kit has everything you need to do your own gel manicure at home. They range in price from $100 a kit to $45 (the cheapest price I’ve found is here on Amazon
I eyed the kits for a few weeks and read some reviews online. Most of the reviews were really good and the kit cost about the same as one visit for a salon gel manicure, so I decided to buy myself a kit at Target (about $65). The box says that you can create up to 10 manicures with the kit, and you can buy a refill kit for about $15 when your run out of stuff in the original kit (we’ll talk about that later). There are a lot of color polishes you can buy separately, but the starter kit only comes in your choice of two colors – Wine Not (which is a wine color) and Shell We Dance (which is a light pink/nude). It also is supposed to come in Red My Lips (bright red), but I’ve never personally seen that one in stores. I used Shell We Dance.
NOTE: Make sure you are getting the gel polish kit. Sally Hansen also makes a gel strips kit, but the reviews for it haven’t been nearly as good – and since the gel polish dries immediately, you really don’t need to deal with the strips.
Inside the box, you’ll find a top coat, color coat, base coat and LED light. There’s also polish remover, a cuticle stick, nail file/buffer, nail cleanser pads and instructions.
