A Tale of Two Cities: Deborah Lippmann Gel Lab

Part One: It Was The Worst of Times (or, Unhappy Visit to Chip City)

Pardon me for putting the bad news first and messing with Mr. Dickens' literary masterpiece, but as we've just seen from Jessica's last post, the Deborah Lippmann Gel Lab was none to kind to her and her lovely Bad Romance mani. In fact, her nails took a quick vacation to Chip City on Day 1, and that is never a good feeling when you're using a new base and top coat combo. After repairing the chips and having them happen again a few days later...well, at this point, I think it is fair to say that Jess is less than impressed with the Gel Lab.

However!

Part Two: It Was The Best of Times (or, Vacation in Weeksville)

On September 3, I was at Walgreen's picking up a handful of Sinful Colors on sale for a terrific price--99 cents for the regular stuff, $1.99 for the Sinful Shine. (I remember the date because I got hit on in the weirdest possible way by some guy in line next to me and I had to text the story to a few people. I hardly ever delete texts so I went back and looked.) I came home with somewhere around 15 new polishes, chose one (Rich in Heart, which unbeknownst to me at the time is a dupe for OPI's Midnight in Moscow), snatched up my new Gel Lab set, and went to work.

Here's a quick photo. It's just one hand, because I fully anticipated this to be a two- or three-day manicure at best and I just wanted to show Jess how it looked.

 
I knew I had work to do for DLC, you see, and that always ruins a good mani. Then I caught a stomach virus, and spent my days off in bed instead of messing around with polish. I got better, went back to work...and came home the night before my days off with a raging sinus infection, so I spent the better part of three days off in bed, AGAIN. Grr.

Saturday night, Jess and I were talking about the Gel Lab and I snapped this picture of my Gel Lab/Sinful Colors mani that I'd done on 9/3. The photo was taken on 9/14.

I removed the polish on 9/15 because I had gotten the China Glaze Autumn Nights collection in the mail that I'd ordered from NoMoreRack and I was ready for something new. There was no difference between this picture and when I removed the polish 14 hours later. And I fully expect that with the staying power of the polish and Gel Lab combo, I could have kept it rolling for another week with no problems. I had minimal tip wear, and the other hand only had a couple of chips that were caused solely because I'm a bit of a klutz--things that had nothing to do with the polish itself. I was happily ensconced in Weeksville while Jess languished in Chip City.

So here at 2G1O...when it comes to the Gel Lab, we're squarely on both sides of the fence. I loved it. Jess, not so much. Or was this all because I have a freakish relationship with cheap nail polish? I'll have to try it again to know for sure, but for now...Gel Lab is the Lippmann for me!