Broadway Nails Gel Strong Review: Where's Nemo and Ballet Shoes

First of all, let me apologize for the long gaps between posts. My laptop is on the fritz, so getting photos from my camera to the blog has been a bit of a nightmare. I'm working on getting it fixed, but thanks for being patient with me! Even though this is a hobby blog, I feel terrible for taking so long between posts-plus I miss telling you all about my polish excursions. Speaking of...

If my drawerful of Sinful Colors bottles has taught me anything, it's that you can't judge a polish by its price point, so recently I decided to give a new discount brand a shot. A line called Gel Strong recently hit my local Dollar General store from the Broadway Nails brand. Broadway Nails has been around for a while and has some cute shades, but I've never tried them, and the Gel Strong polish just showed up here recently with a retail price of $2. In the interests of science, I picked up two colors in different finishes to get a feel on whether this is the next fabulous steal brand. Short answer: probably not, but they're ok. Long answer: read on.

The first polish I picked up from this line was Where's Nemo, a cheerful green shimmer. I would describe this as a granny smith apple with silver and green shimmer. I really like this color. I wore it for several days, then wore it again as an accent in some tulip nail art that wasn't quite blogworthy, but the polish was great against a darker green creme for my leaves and flower stems. It's shimmery and pretty, different while still understated, and I looked at my nails a lot when I was wearing it. Applying it, though, was kind of a pain. It's not thin, but not thick either, and getting even coverage was not easy. Here I'm wearing three coats.

The other color I chose was Ballet Shoes, a peachy pink creme. I think of pale pinks with that name and bright oranges with Nemo references, so I'm not sure who's naming these colors. Nevertheless, Ballet Shoes is a really nice color. While the peach shows more in my photos, on the nail it's more balanced with pink. I used Zoya Lux as an accent and they looked great together. Application was a mess here, though. I used three coats, waited between coats even, and they still looked streaky to me until I applied a generous coat of Julep Freedom Polymer topcoat, which seems to even it out to a beautiful, shiny finish. 

So are they the next Sinful Colors? The colors themselves are delightful. Hats off to the Broadway Nails color team, because there wasn't a ton of selection in the Gel Strong line, but they were all interesting, on trend colors, like a shimmery nude, midnight blue, and a line of ultra bright neons. Several of the polishes seem to be oddly named, as if the names were chosen before the colors were actually finished. They also have a topcoat that I haven't tried, which could have contributed to the most glaring flaw of the line: I don't get what's supposed to be "gel" about them. Neither polish was particularly squishy, and lasting time was about average. If I buy more of these and feel adventurous, I may give the topcoat a try, too. I probably will buy from this line again because the colors themselves were so good, but the formula issues were a serious strike.

Have you tried Gel Strong or any of the other Broadway Nails line? What did you think?