Haruyama Soak-Off Gel Polish and IBDI Decals

Sample provided for review

 

Today I've got something a little different: gel polish, courtesy of NashlyNails, who kindly sent me some products for review. While I do have some gel polish from Sally Hansen's foray into it, I've mostly just used their gel topcoat to add wear time to nail polish strips, so it's been a long while since I did a full gel manicure. I pulled out my light and got to work with these two Haruyama gel polishes. Because they're gels, you can't see the colors, but they're 964 (pink) and 254 (medium pink).

 

Because these coordinated so nicely with each other, I swatched them together; 964 is on my index finger while 254 is on my other digits. Any uneven coverage you may notice is my fault, not the polish's. It had been so long since I worked with gel that it took me a bit to adjust my application technique to the slightly different formula of gel compared to regular polish. Basically, I needed to use thinner coats of the gel, which I was doing better at by the time I got to my pinky finger.

 

When I was curing these, I noticed they had a glow to them under the LEDs in my lamp, so I hit them with my black light and was delighted to see both colors reacted. Good to know should parties with black lights become a thing in my life again one day.

 

NashlyNails also sent some water slide decals from IBDI.

 

I used one of the gold fronds on the light pink and black fronts on the medium pink. The decals were easy to work with. I just cut out the frond I wanted, dropped it in a little dish of warm water for about five or ten seconds until the backing paper was saturated, fished it out with a manicure stick, and slid the decal off the backing and onto my nail. I didn't have any issues with the decals tearing which I was worried about since it's been a while since I did water decals, too. I applied topcoat over the decals once I was sure they were dry.

 

 

Of course I had to see the decals under black light, too ... great contrast, even with the gold/pink combination that's more subtle in regular light. (The angle of the light is giving my cuticles a weird glow here, I see.)

 

When it came time to remove this polish, I used the 180 grit Staleks Pro nail file NashlyNails also sent. This has a metal base that a replacable pad is stuck to, so when the pad wears out, a new one can just be put on, reusing the durable metal base over and over. I "broke the seal" of the top layer of polish by filing across the surface of my nails, then put acteone saturated cotton pads on my fingers and covered them with some soak off nail caps I finally broke down and bought after getting tired of cutting up squares of foil. I didn't keep the caps on very long, maybe five minutes, and the Haruyama gel polish just slid right off onto the cotton pad when I wiped gently. Very easy.

 

There are a bunch of colors of Haruyama gel polish in 8ml bottles on the NashlyNails website, ranging from $6.99 for cremes and glitters to $7.99 for magnetics. As many colors of polish as there were, there were many many more sets of IBDI decals, which are $3.49. Use code frazzle10 for 10% off your first order ... though you may want to wait until next week after I post the other polish I got to try, which I liked so much I'm wearing it as a full mani as I type this.

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The products shown in this entry were provided free for review purposes. The content of the entry was not dictated by the provider, and I get to keep the polishes for my own use.