are you gellin?

i believe i have mentioned before my issue with picking at my nail polish... it drives me nuts, because i actually love having my nails all pretty and done looking. but it's like i'm physically incapable of keeping my picky little hands off myself - within 24 hours my freshly painted nails are usually naked again, and a pile of shredded refuse sits on the coffee table in front of me.

now, i don't want to jinx myself here by talking about this too early on ... so i'm going to give it the "wait and see" caveat... here goes...

i kind of love when the fashion mags do the "best of" beauty product blurbs. they name it all sorts of different catchy things - but the bottom line is it's "the best of's". usually voted on by both the readers and the beauty editors - so you get a bit of the real deal. one of the new items that i noticed popping up this year is the use of gel in manicures. (right here i wish i had Sheldon, from Big Bang Theory, to elaborate on exactly what consitutes "gel".) i became quite intrigued. then a few weeks back, i went with my friend Heidi to get toes done, and noticed a sign in the nail salon for the gel manicure. further intrigued. cut to yesterday, after not one but two picked apart, self-done manicures within 48 hours, i decided to seek professional help. i hopped across the street to the Dashing Diva nail joint, and asked for the gel manicure. she asked me which kind - but the options seemed a bit overwhelming since i had only had one coffee that day, so i said "the basic". i watched in fascination as the woman put layers of goops on my nails, one of which was nail gel, followed by the polish i chose. (it's a bit tricky to choose, since the results last a long time - so one must pick wisely... and if it succeeds, i may just bring in one of my own fave polishes for the next one). but i should not get ahead of myself, should i? the gel manicure will allegedly last me up to 2 weeks - so as mentioned above, "we'll see" - but a full 24 hours later, i have not picked at it... stay tuned for the adventures of Picky mcGee's gel fix.