Broadway Nails Gel Strong: Neons and Shimmers and Glitters-Oh My!

I knnnnooowww my last few reviews have been Broadway Nails Gel Strong, but my mother-in-law got me a few new really cool ones that were a little outside my usual picks (she gets me, by the way), so I decided that you'd surely forgive me for one more Gel Strong review post.


I'm not typically a fan of neons, so I wasn't so sure about Powder Green at first. What won me over was, surprisingly, the application. Application has been very hit and miss with this line, and neons are notoriously poorly behaved overall, so I was very pleased with how smoothly and evenly this one applied without a white base. I still needed three coats to get to the opacity I like, but two would be sufficient if you don't mind a looser finish. It mattefies a touch as it dries (another common feature of neons), and is just enough "bright." As far as neons go, I don't have much to complain about on this one.


My second gifted polish was a mixed hex and round purple, pink, and orange glitter topper called Playground (shown here over Powder Green). It looks pink in the bottle, but as you can see, the color in the bottle is an odd representation of what it looks like on the nail. The purple kind of steals the show once you get it over another color. The clear base doesn't obscure the color underneath, making it good for a fun accent like the ones here. On the middle finger, I applied the polish to a sponge and dabbed it on, while on the ring finger I applied directly from the bottle. From the bottle gave a lighter touch, using the sponge really packed it in. This is a fun polish that will be great for experimenting. I want to try it over different color palettes, matte, shiny, dense, scattered...so many possibilities!


The third polish was Chalice, a blue shimmer. I had passed over this one a few times because I'm pretty happy with my midnight blue selection. I already have Julep Lacey and Rimmel Lasting Finish Pro Midnight Blue, both gorgeous, and I recently added Julep Austen to my midnight posse. Truth be known, though, Austen hadn't turned out to be exactly what I'd wanted. I'd expected a royal blue; what I got was lovely, but much darker than the website swatch. (Caveat: I got Austen from a batch that Julep proactively identified as flawed and replaced with a free polish for people who'd already ordered it, so my opinion of it may not be representative of the "good" Austens.) When I tried on Chalice, I was so excited-it was a dead ringer for the Austen swatch! Chalice is a royal blue/rich cobalt shimmer that applies beautifully in 2-3 coats, and cleans up really easily for a bright blue polish. And it is so pretty, y'all.



Can we just take one more look at this polish? This time it's paired up with Julep Angie, a silver linear holo, with Sinful Shine topcoat over the whole thing. I thought about doing a design on the accent nail, but these two are so perfectly paired that I didn't have the heart to mess with it. I'm in love with this mani right now.

I think my MIL is a visionary. These are all three polishes I'd consciously passed over, and now I'm glad they're in my collection, especially Chalice. Have you ever been wowed by a polish you'd initially written off as 'meh'?