Gel manicures - good or bad?

Gel manis look great but they are brutal on your nails.

A couple of women in my dance group recently had to go polishless for a couple of months to let their nails recover from getting gel manicures. Polishless is a problem when you're expected to have mani/pedis for gigs. They had to go with those stick-on nails for gigs - which have their own weirdnesses.

So even if you remove it with more gentle stuff the gel kills the nails? I've only had these manicures a few times, but this last time I really noticed how bad my nails seemed after.

I think I will go with the regular ones from now on.

Sally Hansen makes a gel polish that can be removed with regular nail polish remover stuff and no light is required to set it. It does need a top coat which they also sell. I just bought some last night at Walgreen's and haven't tried it yet. Will let you know if it causes a problem.

I polished my nails this afternoon with the Sally Hansen gel polish. Having never had a professional gel polish at a salon, I can't compare the two.

The Sally Hansen seems to be much thicker than normal nail polish and the top coat seems to have hardened the polish and nails. I couldn't scrape off where I painted outside the lines, had to use some polish remover to clean up the quick polish job. It took a long time for both coats to dry to the point that I could touch things without the polish being damaged.

It has been about 8 hours since I polished them and have done a lot of typing at the computer since then. The edges of the nail polish is starting to show a bit of wear, other than that, it is holding up.

The real test will be when I go swimming tomorrow. My usual polish doesn't survive a swim without having to be removed and repainted.