Review of UR SUGAR Base and Top Coat Set

Get ready for Gelpolishpalooza! It’s funny how I never thought that I would do gel manicures, but somehow I’ve ended up as a reviewer for a ton of them now! Expect to see quite a few more gel polish reviews in the near future.

Today’s focus is going to be on the foundation of any good gel manicure: a base and top coat set. This one is from UR Sugar, and it had my doubts because this set is one of the cheapest ones you can find for the amount of formula you get!

The UR Sugar Base and Top Coat set comes in a 15 mL bottle size. That’s one of the largest bottle sizes you can obtain, especially for gel polish!

Phases of the Moon Manicure

Social media was buzzing with pictures of the blood wolf moon from a few days ago, so naturally it inspired me to do some nail art! Instead of doing a true eclipse sequence, I did phases of the moon.

I started by painting my nails with Celestial from Maniology. In the bottle, you can see lots of holographic glitter, but it didn’t show up nearly as well when painted on my nails.

2 coats of Celestial from Maniology were painted on my nails. Unfortunately the glitter doesn’t shine through such an opaque formula very well. I’ll have to see if it fares better when used as a stamping polish.

Review of Aimeili Gel Polish in 019 Cake Pop

Have a craving for sweets? The beautiful color of Aimeili’s gel polish in color 019 Cake Pop will visually intensify that for you!

Color 019 Cake Pop from Aimeili is a gorgeous light pink candy color with a slightly blue undertone and a creme finish.

Musical Ballerina Nails

My nails have been growing out decently, and with the length comes French manicures! This design joins some of my favorite art forms: ballet, music, and nails!

I started by painting my nails with a pretty pink gel polish from Aimeili in color 019 Cake Pop. It really does remind you of candy when you see it!

3 thin coats of Cake Pop were applied for this swatch with each coat cured for 1 minute.

Review of Aimeili Gel Polish 093 My Fantasy Gold

Today’s review is of a beautiful yellow gold jelly glitter polish from Aimeili, color 093 called My Fantasy Gold. For some unknown reason, this polish photographed more orange than yellow. I assure you that the color is more like that of a yellow marigold flower rather than the brassy tone shown here.

Black and Gold Baroque Nails

Today’s design is a lovely black and gold baroque/rococo swirl that I put together because I thought the color combination would look nice.

I started by painting my nails with Aimeili Gel Polish in 093 My Fantasy Gold. This polish is a yellow jelly formula with lots of gold glitter flakes. This color has surprisingly good coverage, so it only took 2 coats to get the opacity shown below.

Disclaimer: This polish photographed more orange than the actual color, but I couldn’t fix the tint without wildly making my skin tone look totally off. I would say My Fantasy Gold is more of a yellow marigold shade.

Review of Aimeili Gel Polish in 023 Silver Glitter Explosion

Today’s review is of a beautiful glitter gel polish from Aimeili, color 023 called Silver Glitter Explosion.

Like all of Aimeili’s polishes, the outer packaging is pretty much identical across the brand. The company uses the same boxes and bottles for all their colors. What differentiates each one is that there is a sticker on the back of the carton with an item specific barcode, and the top of handle of this bottle has a sticker with the number 023 printed on a background that resembles silver glitter so you can identify the color. For this reason, I would store these polishes outside of the cartons in a container where you can see the tops of the bottles easily.

Aimeili includes an instruction and tips leaflet inside the box, which I have scanned here for your perusal. It contains super helpful information on making your manicure last and how to remove gel polish properly, so I suggest that you read it, especially if you are just starting to use gel polishes.

Review of Elite 99 K12 36W UV/LED Lamp

I’ve been using a lot of gel polishes lately, so it’s only natural that I give you a review of a UV/LED lamp.

This one from Amazon is offered by Elite 99, although that is not who manufactured the lamp. The closest thing on the item to a brand name is K12, although I think that’s the model number of the unit.

The box got a little beat up in shipment, but the contents were fine.

Numerous spelling and grammatical errors appear on the packaging as I’m sure that this product was made in China. Interestingly, the front and back panels look identical to each other as do the two side panels.

Snowflake French Manicure

We’ve had little bits of snow here and there in NYC, although it melts not long after it falls. It’s proved to be the inspiration for this pretty snowflake tipped manicure.

I started by painting my nails with a silver and holo glitter gel polish from Aimeili called Silver Glitter Explosion (#023). It applies mostly clear and looks like fairy dust thanks to the sparkling glitter pieces. I used 3 coats for this manicure to get the coverage shown below.

Review of Aimeili Gel Base and Top Coat Set

Lately I’ve been getting into gel polish. It’s rather ironic because I never thought I would, knowing how often I change my nails, but I’ve gotten into the habit of applying gel polish to my right hand (my Cindy hand) to protect my nails from getting beat up from using acetone so much. Between needing to remove polish on my hands and toes on a regular basis, Cindy also touches acetone while cleaning stamping plates and generally gets abused at work and while doing household chores. It made sense for me to apply gel polish, which generally doesn’t get affected by acetone when exposed for short periods of time, at least to that hand so that I didn’t have to worry about my nails becoming increasingly brittle over time.

It has been said that gel polishes work best when you use them with the base and top coat made by the same company, so I used a set by Aimeili along with one of their gel colors (110 Prunus Persica) for this review.

This gel base and top coat set from Aimeili is packaged in a cute box and comes with an instruction sheet inside.