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"By now you&amp;#x27;ve probably heard about gel manicures&amp;amp;#8212;how they&amp;#x27;re great and last for weeks and are extra-shiny and don&amp;#x27;t require drying time and a lot of good stuff. But you&amp;#x27;ve probably also heard that they were expensive and kind of a pain &amp;#x27;cause you had to go to a salon to get them. Those last few things were all true up until recently. But now there&amp;#x27;s an at-home kit that makes the process much more affordable as easy to do whenever you have time. But is it worth it? I tried it out to see. Here are the results: The kit I used is called The Red Carpet Manicure Starter Kit. It comes with a portable LED and it sells for $59.99 at Ulta (or ulta.com, if you&amp;#x27;re up for putting together all the elements yourself), Meijer and Fred Meyer Stores. So here was the process: I cleaned and prepped my nails as instructed on their Web site, then I painted on the gel base coat and &amp;quot;cured&amp;quot; four of my nails under the light for 1 minute&amp;amp;#8212;it&amp;#x27;s too hard to get all five of your fingers under the light at once, you see. Then I did my thumb. Next, I painted on the nail color. I chose this pink because I really wanted to go with the light beige shade they sent me, but I figured it would&amp;#x27;t really show up in the pictures as well. So I compromised. Again, I had to paint my four fingers first and cure them&amp;amp;#8212;this time for 2 minutes&amp;amp;#8212;and then do my thumb. Then I applied a second coat (well, actually, more on that later) and repeated. Next it was time for the shiny top coat with more under-the-light time. And the final step was to use a little of the included cleanser get to the sticky residue off. How was the process? Pretty much exactly like what it&amp;#x27;s like to get it at the salon. Same smell, same having to stick your hands under a blue light. But there were some things I noticed: &amp;amp;#8212;I had read from other reviews that you really had to keep your layers incredibly thin. This was tricky because the gel base coat and shiny top coat are super thick. We shall see how it wears. &amp;amp;#8212;The polish was less opaque than I was expecting, which was worrisome because of the whole &amp;quot;use thin coats&amp;quot; thing. I used a slightly thicker application on my left and three coats on my right to see which one would get the better result. I&amp;#x27;ll report back. &amp;amp;#8212;The whole thing takes longer than I expected. Between painting every layer and curing it&amp;amp;#8212;plus doing my thumbs separately&amp;amp;#8212;it took over half an hour to complete. But, still, no drying time where I had to walk around not touching anything afterwards. So it&amp;#x27;s still a time-saver compared to a regular manicure. &amp;amp;#8212;You have to be extra-careful around the edges not to let it go past your nails onto your skin. If the topcoat pools around your nails (like it did on my right thumb), it doesn&amp;#x27;t just tear away like regular nail polish. I actually had to trim it off with nail clippers, and still, the edge is slightly lifted off my nail. Oops. Overall, though, the process was pretty painless. Now I just have to see how long it lasts&amp;amp;#8212;and what it&amp;#x27;s like to take off. But I&amp;#x27;ll cross that bridge (and post about it) when I come to it! In the meantime, have any of you tried this kit yet? Curious to now? And for more gel manicure fun, check out my ruby slippers mani and Petra&amp;#x27;s super shiny beige-y pink one (perfect for brides!)"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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