Gelish

So about a year ago, my friend offered to pay for a manicure for me if I went with her to get her nails done. Uh, heck yes. Free manicure? How can I say no? I got a cute gelish manicure with Ocean Wave and some heart stamps on the ring finger. It was cute. And it lasted nearly three weeks. I'm not easy on my nails. At all. I do water changes on both saltwater and freshwater tanks and in general am not easy on them. Since then, I've gotten them every once in a while and for Christmas, my mom got me the gelish starter kit. I was soooo surprised. It was great! Learning how to do it... That was interesting. But I've finally gotten it so I can make it last about three weeks.
The first time I tried it, it was kind of a mess.
It was Is It An Illusion with a coat of Silver Sand (I believe) on top of it. It was difficult my first time because I wasn't sure how exactly to do it. I got it a bit too thick on the edges and that made it catch on things and it made it peel easier.
Then I tried this color. Up In The Blue. But this was after I dyed my hair and it stained my nails.

It worked out better.
If you've never gotten a gelish or shellac polish done before, what they do is put a base coat on, and put it under a light for about 45 seconds.

Then you do the color coat, and about 45 more seconds under an LED light. And another coat of color and 45 more seconds under the light. And then maybe another coat of color, 45 seconds of light, then top coat and then 45 seconds of light. But you want to make sure to put the polish on really thin and make sure it's far enough away from the cuticle. Also, need to do a little bit of the polish on the edge of the nail. After a week or so, you may have noticeable grow out.

Picture above is about six days of grow out with Gelish Ocean Wave. My favorite.
But it's not too difficult to touch up the edges.

All I did was file down the area near my cuticle and do the base coat on my natural nail, the color over the natural nail a couple times and then the color over the whole thing once to tie it in together. And then top it off with the top coat. Not too hard and it lasts a while too!
To take it off, what I do is use acetone nail polish remover and put it on a cotton ball/pad and wrap foil over my finger tips. I let it sit for like 10 minutes and then scrape it off.

Terrible picture. Sorry.
But it's super simple!
I've used other gel polishes that aren't gelish with the gelish Base coat and Top It Off and they work fine. The red above is SensatioNail in Raspberry Wine.
Overall, I freaking love it!
I've tried doing my nails with regular polish and get annoyed and frustrated.
The great thing about gelish is that you can paint on top of it with regular polish and it will come off with nonacetone remover without harming the gelish! After the hair dye stained the gelish, I covered it with blue sparkles and it didn't look too bad. The sparkles chipped easily but it still looked nice for a day!

Great for a special occasion where you want it a little bit different.
But gelish is seriously fantastic. If you haven't tried it yet, I definitely recommend it. Instead of the like two or three days that a regular manicure lasts, it'll last at least a week even with the hardest of wear.