Essie Gel Polish

I won’t lie, I am not normally a fan of a having gel on my nails. Having said that, the last time I tried old-school gels on my nails was on my wedding, which was more than six years ago!

Since then, I’ve moved over to Shellac and had written gel polish off all together.

But then, I got to try the new Essie Gel and as much as I didn’t want to love it, I was really impressed with it.

It lasted for 13 days, with only a slight chip on one of my nails and it looked great. It probably would have lasted longer, but since I chose a bright shade, the re-growth was getting to me.

It’s loaded with an exclusive Keratin-Care technology in all processes of the application. This ensures that the nails protected from start to finish.

The formula itself is super thin, so you don’t get thick eeky paint blobs. And, although its a gel, it looks like a regular mani, but one that’s more polished, and lasts longer than a traditional paint polish.

The application is all done in salon (sorry gals, but you will have to go into a salon to get your Essie gel on), but here’s what you can expect:

A four step process that starts with an Essie pre cleanser, base coat, gel colour, top coat and post cleanser. The nails are cured using a professional LED lamp, that’s super spacious, so you don’t accidentally bump your nail polish off

The only thing that didn’t blow me away was the colour selection. While the 36 colours on offer are pretty, Essie has always been one of those brands with really “wow” solid colours (which is why I love them so much), so I almost expected their gel colours to be more amazing!

However, that could just be me, since I personally favour solid, bright, stand out nail colours as apposed to pretty colours that just look natural.

Still they are nice.

The shade I tried was Another Round (watermelon) which is perfect for summer. I also liked glamping not camping (a bright orange), Net Worth (a pretty teal) and Flare to Dare (a black with sparkle – which I’m dying to try for winter).

The other great thing is that 35 of the 36 Essie gel shades match up with already existing traditional ESSIE polishes. So you can touch up your gel mani’s at home or on holiday.

Below is the current shade palette, with the matching Essie nail polish shades next to each one.

To view a larger version, click on the image below.