We Aim To Slay

Since making the switch to at-home gel manicures I have been on a journey to take care of my natural nails, while not compromising on my desire to express myself with my nail art. Enter my go-to manicure product – builder gel.

Earlier this year I shared my opportunity to work with the brand Olive & June – which I have really been enjoying! – so I was pleasantly surprised when I came home from work to find their newly released Builder Gel Collection! 

What is Builder Gel?

So what is “builder gel”? According to Alyssa Morin’s article for the L’Oreal Paris Beauty Magazine, What Are Builder Gel Nails?, it is “a type of gel polish with a thick viscosity that creates length, thickness, and strength for your natural nails or nail tips. The gel polish formula combines the effects of a primer, base coat, and builder gel all in one bottle.”

I’ve been using a builder gel as my base polish for a few years now for exactly that purpose – to protect my natural nails long enough to grow them out! If, like me, you tend to be very clumsy with your hands, or even if your nails are prone to breaking, this is a great product to use as a protective barrier for your nails!

The Collection

When you purchase the Builder Gel Kit ($48) you receive the: Nail Strengthener, Clear Builder Gel Polish, Sugar Glow Builder Gel Polish, Patent-Pending Easy Fit Nail Forms, Liner Brush, Builder Nail Buffer, Builder Nail File, Prep Pads, and the Wooden Cuticle Pusher. The entire collection includes sixteen shades that come in various finishes, each shade retails for $12 USD and the entire collection retails for $192 USD.

My kit also came with the shade Lavender Frost, a sheer lavender shade!

Let’s Test the Product!

For my first test run of this collection I created this autumnal inspired set and used the strengthener, clear and lavender shades. 

This was not my first time using a nail strengthener, but I don’t typically use it beneath gel polish because it prevents the gel from “gripping” your natural nail which leads to chipping. Honestly, I’ve only used this product once so I’m not sure that I have the best read on it, but this manicure didn’t chip off!

Over the nail strengthener I painted two coats of the clear gel (shown above) each of which I cured for two minutes using the Olive & June lamp…

…and two coats of the Lavender Frost gel, before using my two newest Olive & June shades LD and E+M.

My next test resulted in a manicure I liked much better! This time I created a Wicked: For Good inspired set, and I only used the clear gel as my base. Not only did this manicure come out looking great, but it lasted for nearly three weeks! And let me tell you, traditionally I’m lucky if I can make my nails last a full two weeks!

Most recently I tried the Sugar Glow gel – described on the website as a “sheer milky white” –  and the nail forms to create this manicure!

It quite literally took me all day to accomplish this set of nails. In the past I’ve spent a grand total of six hours working on one set of nails (the Sailor Moon inspired nails I created for this year’s Valentine’s Day post!) – and this time it took me nearly eight hours. 

As this was my first time using nail forms or creating nail extensions, my approach was to start by creating nails that were incredibly long and as “rounded-square” shape as possible before filing down the nails to my desired length and shape. That approach worked as a first attempt, but I ended up wasting a lot of product using it in that manner. 

My Thoughts

Overall, I love these builder gels! And honestly, I’m really impressed by the quality of all of the Olive & June polishes I’ve tried so far. I’m excited to test more of their products, and especially excited to get my hands on more shades of bulder gel! 

I will say that some of the shades don’t exactly match their descriptions: I purchased the shade LD from Target because I was under the impression it was a cranberry shade, but it ended up looking more like a dusty rose. And, when I originally opened the bottle of the Sugar Glow gel it looked like it would be on the blue end of opal but on it created the perfect semi-sheer creamy tone to create “soap nails”. I ended up finishing this set with a bit of a sheer & sparkly pink by a different brand on top to add dimension, before sealing with the Olive & June Gel Top Coat, which is one of the best nail products I’ve ever tried.

But, I found the nail forms to be difficult to work with, which led to me not loving my most recent set. 

There were three sizes of nail forms in my kit, and I used all three in an attempt to find my “perfect fit”, but in the end I think sizing the forms to my nails was actually the easy part.

Because the forms are stickers they don’t have the ability to stay exactly how you formed them if you’re not incredibly careful and uniform. This was relatively easy to accomplish when working with my dominant hand, and relatively impossible when working with my non-dominant hand. If you look at my nails head on, as they are seen in most of these photos, there is not much difference between my dominant and non-dominant hands. But when you look at my nails from other angles you can tell that I wasn’t able to get the placement of the forms right, which led to the nails being bumpy, overly thick, and uneven.

As I explained above, I created excessively long nails in the beginning and filed them down to the length and shape I wanted, and they still ended up being way too long for my preference. So much so in fact, that I had to stop typing the draft of this post to file my nails down further! Unfortunately, this led to losing the almond shape (which I really liked!), but my nails are at a much more functional length!

Overall, do I recommend this collection? Yes, I think the Builder Gels are phenomenal and any DIY nail girlie should have at least one of them in their collection! But personally, I’d skip these nail forms in favor of a metal (and reusable) set of forms from my local beauty supply store. 

What Do You Think?

Are you a builder gel user? Have you tried the Olive & June builder gel collection? Let me know in the comments below!

I’ll be back next week to share all of the goodies I won in the Instagram giveaway I entered, hosted by the brands Aora Mexico, Ceremonia, and Yakampot! 

Have a great rest of your week, and remember to SLAY!