I’ve been playing with my GELibility again, and this time I was successful at creating a holographic gel polish! Woo hoo! If you don’t know what Gelibility is, it’s a custom formulated clear gel that can be mixed with regular nail polish (RNP) to turn it into gel polish. I did a full review of GELibility a few weeks ago (read it here), and in those trials I was unsuccessful at getting holographic effects when mixing a holo polish with the gel. I did a drop for drop ratio when mixing the RNP with GELibility. After writing that post, the creator of GELibility did some of her own trials and discovered that one drop of GELibility actually has more volume than a drop of regular nail polish so I was actually adding too much gel into my mixture which greatly diluted the colors and effects.
In my recent trials I switched to a ratio of 1 drop of GELibility for every 2 drops of regular nail polish… what a difference!! Of course the effects will vary depending on the polish that you’re using, but I found this combination to work much better. Below is a picture that demonstrates the side-by-side comparisons of the RNP to the GELiblity mixtures. I applied three coats of each. From left-to-right, the colors shown here are Llarowe Show Me Again!, KBShimmer Shore Thing, Elevation Polish Haleakala, Glitter Daze Flowers Are a Girl’s Best Friend, and Girly Bits What Happens in Vegas Ends Up on Instagram. These are all indie polishes, and a couple of them are also colors that I used in my first trial. The first color on the left, Llarowe Show Me Again, is a gorgeous duochrome, and with this new ratio the effects are much improved. Obviously adding a clear gel to any color is going to dilute it somewhat, but I’m pretty happy with how these finishes turned out.
I’m most happy that I was actually able to get a holographic effect! Below is another shot of my nails with Haleakala by Elevation Polish. This is a highly pigmented holographic polish, and adding the gel only muted the effect slightly. I was also sure to only apply a very thin layer of top coat over the color coats because I know from past experiences that a thick gel top coat will also mute holographic effects.
In these trials I used a nail art color palette from Bundle Monster to mix my gel polish creations. This dish was absolutely perfect for this use since it has several round pods to hold the different color mixtures. I also found this tray very easy to clean when I was finished. I just took a paper towel with some alcohol on it and wiped each little pod out.
I also used one of the brushes from my Bundle Monster UV Gel / Acrylic Nail Art brush set. This set of 6 is perfect for using with gel polishes. The first angled brush is great for cleaning up along the cuticle area before curing your gel polish. The brush all of the way on the right is the one that I used for this experiment. I also cleaned the brush with a paper towel and alcohol.
