A few months ago, I blogged about a brand whose gel nail kit I had owned for a few years – Sensationail. The post proved to be fairly popular, so I thought you guys might like to read about a different brand of gel nails, to give you some more choice – especially seeing as a Sensationail kit is priced at a rather steep £49.99. So, when United Beauty contacted me after the BLFW event to see if I would like to try out their Gel Touch Mini Starter Kit*, I jumped at the chance.
This kit has the same fundamental principles as the Sensationail polish to gel kit – paint your nails as normal, and finish off with one or two coats of their gel polish and cure under the LED light. The first thing that struck me about GelTouch’s kit was the size of the lamp – it is TINY! It is smaller than the palm of my hand and the legs also fold up, making it the perfect gel nail kit to take away with you on holiday or pop in your handbag. Even though it is so small, you can cure one-two fingers at a time under the lamp, meaning it doesn’t take much longer than a normal sized lamp at all. It very cleverly turns the light off of its own accord after 60 seconds, so you know when the time is up and don’t have to fiddle around with annoying timers. I was also impressed that the lamp comes with a USB cable, so you can plug it directly into your laptop and do your nails whilst catching up on your latest Netflix binge. Perfect!
So – how were the results? The first time I used this gel I wasn’t very impressed, but that was probably my fault – I only did one coat. After about 3 or 4 days, it had chipped rather significantly (but still lasted longer than regular nail polish normally does on me). The second time I used the kit, I was much more impressed – I did two coats of gel over a base coat and two coats of OPI glitter and boy were my nails strong and shiny! As I type this, I am on day 3 of this manicure and my nails haven’t chipped at all and still have an absolutely amazing shine! I definitely think I’ve learnt the trick to making this successful is TWO coats of gel!
Edit: on my way train journey home on Day 3, I caught the polish on my bag and half of the nail chipped off! Unfortunately, it just peeled right off – maybe I wasn’t careful enough around my skin as it was the nail I had got a little bit of the gel onto my skin so it hadn’t bonded to the nail 100%. Bummer.
I definitely can’t argue that it makes the nail super shiny, and makes your nail polish ‘pop’ a little more. Here are some pictures of my first attempt (one coat) and second attempt (two coats). I forgot to take a picture of my second attempt, but you can kind of see them in this photo I took for my Glossybox post! I haven’t had a chance to use the Matte effect top coat yet, but watch out for my insta where I’ll share the designs I create.
My conclusion? It’s much cheaper than the Sensationail kit – Sensationail’s polish to gel kit is £49.99, whereas this Gel Touch kit is only £24.99. Admittedly, I do find Sensationail lasts a little longer, so it depends whether you want to save or splurge! I definitely love this kit just for the cute mini lamp!
Do you use an at home gel kit? If so, what one do you use? Let me know in the comments below!
If you liked this post, why not check out my other nail posts?
You can follow me on – Instagram | Twitter | Pinterest | Bloglovin x
*This post contains PR samples/gifts. Please visit my disclaimer page for more information.