Essence The Gel Nail Polish Review

I love Essence products, they are so cheap but so many are better than expensive cosmetics and their nail polish rarely disappoints.  So I was excited to hear that The Gel was coming to Canada.

Essence The Gel Nail Polish

Shiny, shiny! This new gel nail polish provides incredible gel shine, in rich and beautiful colors, and no lamp required! New color crush technology ensures high intensity color impact and coverage. Combine with the gel nail polish base coat and top coat for superior long lasting wear. No DBP, toluene, or formaldehyde.

Yes, you read that right, you can buy 3-free nail polish for just $2.99 each!

Essence The Gel base coat comes in a slightly different bottle than the regular polishes but holds the same 8ml. It has a slight blue tinge, similar to when you wear white under a UV light and dries quickly.  The top coat comes with a similar size/brush in a cute mirrored bottle.

This time they brought out a white that can be used alone or as a colour intensifying base.  Essence The Gel in Wild White Ways doesn’t have the chalky look of many white polishes and is mostly opaque in one coat (as shown above) but needs two coats if wearing it as a white polish.  As a base, one level is enough as the colour coats are fairly pigmented.

Essence The Gel is available in 8 colours in my local stores: Don’t Be Shy (Lime-ish), Wild White Ways (White), Black Is Back (Black) & Play With My Mint (Mint Green), Fame Fatal (Red), Indian Summer (Peachy-Pink), Lucky (Bright Pink) & Sweet As Candy (Pale Pink).  Sweet as Candy is the only sheer polish of the eight I found.

Essence tells me that The Gel nail polishes are also available in Canada in Absolute Pure (Clear), Space Queen (Light Pink with Glitter), Party Princess (Pink with Glitter), VaVa Voom (Soft Matte Bright Pink), Amazed By You (Medium Purple), Let’s Get Lost (Bright Blue) and Rock My World (Grey).  You can pick them up exclusively at Shoppers Drug Mart.

Sadly, some of the colours I was most looking forward to trying are not available in Canada, I will have to find someone to get them for me elsewhere.  Serendipity is a beautiful lilac purple, My Diary is a dusty rose, On Air is a gold sparkle, and Engaged is a satin finished pink.  I would love to see these added to the Canadian collection.  See all Essence The Gel colours here.

I am wearing Play With My Mint with Indian Summer on my stubby accent nail (I got into a fight with the filing cabinet and it won).  They are fairly opaque in one coat, but  are shown above with two coats plus a coat of the white colour intensifying base, using the matching base and top coat.

Here is my manicure after five full days.  In fairness, it was the worst time to test a polish, I had a few more fights with the filing cabinet and we decided to do a small home project on the weekend which is how I chipped my index finger and scratched the size of my nails.  I imagine that they really would last 7-10 days if you were more careful .

The tip-wear after 5 days was minimal, amazing for me as I often take polish off after 2 days as I can’t stand chips and tip-wear.  It basically just wore off where I wrapped the edge, and most likely due to the plumbing project!  While it is noticeable above, it was barely noticeable to the naked eye – but wrap those nails well with the darker colours!

Buy Essence The Gel Nail Polish

Essence The Gel is available exclusively at Shoppers Drug Mart.  The colours are $2.99 and the base coat and top coat are $4.49.  No lamp is needed to cure these gel like polishes and they should last you a week if you are not too hard on your nails.