Best
Gel Nail Polish
TechnoBuffalo
2019
Are you tired of manicures that chip after a couple of days? Gel polish manicures last for weeks, but they are expensive to have done at the salon. You can save money doing your own soak-off gel manicures at home. All you need is a careful hand, proper technique, and the right supplies. If you don’t have an LED lamp already, you’ll need one to cure the gel polish. Here are some of the best gel nail polishes you can buy.
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If you don’t already have a kit, this is a great place to start. You get a UV/LED lamp large enough for all five fingers at once, six full-sized bottles of color polish, base and topcoat, matte topcoat, and a full set of manicure tools.
If you already have the lamp and your other supplies and you need to select a bottle or two of polish, NYK1 has some great offerings. Choose from over 100 different colors, ranging from sedate to sparkly.
Can’t choose just one color? This gorgeous gift set includes 20 mini (five-milliliter) bottles of gel nail polish. You get a topcoat, a base coat, and 18 different color polishes. The beautiful cream polish colors are based on previous Pantone Color of the Year shades.
Glitter polish is a lot of fun, and FairyGlo offers ten different kits that each contain five glitter colors. Buying your polish in multi-color sets is a great way to build your gel polish collection inexpensively.
Want to pick up a kit but can’t choose just one finish? Modelones has you covered. This six-bottle set includes one of each of the following finishes: color-changing, cat eye, rainbow shiny, diamond shiny, phantom chameleon, and classic gel polish.
You can skip the color coats, but don’t skip the base coat and topcoat. These formulas are not interchangeable, so be sure you have both of these on hand. Kanorine also lists a bunch of fun color sets here so that you can grab some of those too.
Which one should you choose?
Before doing your own soak-off gel manicure for the first time, I’d recommend reading and/or watching some tutorials first. It’s not difficult, but there are some essential things to remember. For example, clean up mistakes before curing, because there isn’t an easy way to clean up mistakes once the polish is cured. You want to use thin coats and be very careful not to cure any polish onto your cuticle because that will cause the entire nail’s worth of polish to lift off prematurely.
Removal of soak-off gel polish needs to be done carefully. You’ll want buff off the shine, place acetone-soaked cotton balls on each nail, and wrap them in aluminum foil, and allow to soak for 15 minutes or more. This should enable the polish to be removed gently with a cuticle stick; you never want to peel or force the polish off lest you damage your nails. If you don’t already own the supplies you need, I’d recommend starting with a kit like Modelones Gel Nail Polish Kit. It comes with everything you need except for the aluminum foil, which presumably you have in your kitchen already. This particular kit comes with a five-finger lamp, which I highly recommend. Many smaller lamps only fit part of your hand, which means you’ll spend twice as long curing your polish.
Once you have your supplies, just have fun with polish colors! I’d probably start with a set like the Modelones Gel Nail Polish Set. You can check out all of the different polish effects and finishes with a single purchase.
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