Last week, I got what ended up being a highly disappointing dip powder manicure at a salon (siiigh) for my birthday. It was super pretty but something about my nail tech’s application – or maybe the product itself – just didn’t jive; more on that another time. Frustrated, after I removed the (fun, pretty, summery) product, I opted to clothe my naked digits with a gel polish manicure. I knew I wanted pink but I didn’t want to go full neon and go for China Glaze Shocking Pink (wore it recently, is great, just not how I was feeling at the time).

Color Inspiration

So – I’m having a bit of a grapefruit moment. I can think of nothing but palomas even though I am a space cadet and keep forgetting to buy some damn grapefruit when I’m at the store.

Gorgeous, right? Check out Preppy Kitchen, John makes some cute and tasty looking stuff!

Anyway, China Glaze Pink Plumeria gives me grapefruit vibes something fierce – so its settled. I’ve featured it on the blog before, in a pedicure, but I wanted to give it another go in that format and with Sensationail Polish to Gel. I picked it up when I bought a bunch of bright colors earlier this year; when I was researching my tentative selections and saw swatches for Pink Plumeria, I required it.

Application

I’m going to go a bit out of order and talk about my pedicure first. Like most of the neon-adjacent pearls, Pink Plumeria is gorgeous but slightly annoying to apply. Unfortunately, we’re still waiting for China Glaze to update their traditional brushes to be more in line with modern brushes. That meant I had to redo a few toes more than once to get everything to lay right, not streak, etc. The color is so lovely that its worth it, though. On my toes, I did a standard application with Gelous Gel Coat base coat and Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat. They look great, just like the the first time I used it for a pedicure and snapped a photo:

Polish to Gel Application

On my fingers, I made a Polish to Gel cocktail. I played with the ratios a bit and ended up with probably 2-3 drops Pink Plumeria to 1 drop Polish to Gel, but it’s worth noting that the gel’s drop-size was larger due to the larger brush. Either way, it applied beautifully this way; I didn’t entirely expect this, but the gel really helps mitigate the quirks of the neon-pearl polish. It cured nicely in spite of my tampering.

And look at how magnificent it came out! I kinda think I want to just turn the entire bottle into a franken-gel. It was so much nicer to work with, and its beauty isn’t compromised at all in this format. It is fantastic on my skin tone (which is less obvious in the picture below; for some reason the polish presents accurately, but my skin did not) and even though its a bit bright, I don’t think it would be, “too much,” for most workplaces.

China Glaze Pink Plumeria & Sensationail Polish to Gel

What are you wearing this week?