Essence The Gel Nail – Wear Test with Electriiiiiic

So I picked up two, well three in the end, of the new Essence Gel Nails range that has just been released.  You can see what the stands look like on this Spotted post.  And I’ve been giving them a test drive whilst visiting family over Easter.

First up are the top and base coat needed to make the Gel nail polish, Gel Nails…. these are £2.50 each. These are the two polishes I bought originally – one the left the Jelly is Bubble Gum and one the right, the blue shade is Electriiiiiic The instructions are quite clear, base coat, then gel nail polish and the finally the top coat.So following these instructions I put on the base coat.  It dries quickly to a waxy finish.  Even when its dry, it is slightly tacky to touch.  it is recommended that you wait until each layer is dry before doing the next one.  Then I applied one coat of Electriiiiiic.

Formula was good, similar to the regular Colour and Go polishes, it was not opaque with one coat.  I then waited until the first coat was dry, before adding a second which evened out the colour and provided better depth. After a few minutes drying, I applied the top coat.  This is quite gloopy and takes a bit of getting used to, I did flood my cuticles once and then didn’t apply enough on another occasion.  However, once on it does dry quite quickly and is touch proof in about 4 mins and rock hard within 10.

So, here we go, a long line of images showing you the polish at the point of application, 2 days later and then 5 days later.  I couldn’t manage more than 5 days as I was itching to change my polish!

First up, after the original application –  

Here is the polish after application on the way to work – you can see the glossy finish.

I found that the first small chips appeared quite quickly.  This may be because the sides of my nails are weaker and I have a little bit of splitting and peeling on one or two of them as well.

This is 2 days post application –

As you can see only a little bit of tip wear on my thumb.

Here you can see chips on the sides of several nails but overall, unless you inspected in great detail, I don’t think you could actually notice.  The glossy finish from the first day is still apparent.

Finally, 5 days post application

You can clearly see the chips on the sides of my nails now, they have gotten larger over time.  The shine is still evident despite having been on for five days.

First thoughts – I am quite impressed with the wear time of this polish. It will be interesting to see if this is repeated with other shades in the range (another review coming up in a week or so..)  What I do like about the range generally is the price point, £2.50 for the top and base coat and £1.60 for the polish, and the fact that the whole range has been done as The Gel Polish.  I didn’t try it on its own, but I would imagine it would be similar to a regular polish.

The top and base coats are a little bit smellier than regular polishes, so work in a ventilated area away from anyone who is sensitive to smells.  The finish is also quite impressive, it  is super shiny and remained so throughout my wear test.

I haven’t tried any other gel nail combo so I have nothing for comparison, but I would say for a weekend away, or a period of time when you know you will not be able to change your polish, this might be for you!

Have you tried other gel polishes?  Let me know what you think the comments, could you try the Essence Gel Nails?

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