Beach Tested, Day 1: Gel Polish

As the name of this blog would imply, I love the beach. I love the beach quite a lot, and lucky, lucky me is currently spending a week at the beach. I'm staying in North Carolina and it is fabulous and wonderful. Luckily, this give me the opportunity to bring lots of beach-specific posts, so stay tuned for new posts all week!

I recently got my first-ever gel manicure thanks to a nice welcome package from my new employers at Ulta. I got an OPI gel manicure in the Ulta salon in this lovely pink color and somewhat enjoyed the experience. I wasn't crazy about the tanning bed for your nails or the fact that it burnt one of my nails pretty badly, but the manicure looked nice and shiny and didn't have a single chip the next day, despite regular wear and tear.

I got the manicure specifically for my trip to the beach but unfortunately had to schedule my appointment for about a week before my departure date. However, I had seriously underestimated the power of gel polish because my nails looked close to perfect the day of our trip south. So, I decided I would leave the polish for the trip and live with the somewhat silly glitter I impulsively decided to get on one of my nails.

We all love a great manicure, and having pretty-colored digits is extra nice at the beach, but between salty seawater and abrasive sand, the color tends not to stay. So this week, I've decided to test the gel and see how well it holds up to the elements since gel is supposedly the be-all end-all of long lasting nail color. Here's what it looked like on Monday:

I know this is not a great quality picture, but as you can see there is nary a chip in my manicure. My right hand was slightly worse for the wear as that is my dominant hand, but there were only a few chips in an otherwise still very good-looking manicure.

Every day in addition to a fun, beach-themed blog post, I'll give you an update on how the manicure is doing. On the last day of my trip (next Sunday) I'll give you a picture and assess the durability of the gel polish.

Today is now Tuesday, and I have to say the left hand is holding strong, however I think the preexisting chips in the right hand have really been a detriment to the integrity of the polish. The chips are now two to three times as large on my right hand and there are a number of large chips on the edge of my right thumb nail. The only deterioration on my left hand is that some of the polish near the edge of my nails appears to be wearing off, but this is a slow process and is not pronounced. Three of the nails of my right hand have pronounced chips and only one nail on my left hand has any chips at all.