Gelish "A Runway for the Money"

Edit: Apparently, overseas and in some Sally Beauty stores, this color is called "Dear Johnny Green". No clue why Gelish wants to use two names for their gels! But it DOES seem more fitting for this color.

This was my first Gelish gel polish... I should have known by the few reviews I could dig up on this color that it wouldn't be the best place to start, but I was really itching for an emerald-like dark green polish, and there are few out there on the market.  I don't even think I could find any photo swatches of this online when I purchased it!

Unfortunately my photos for this aren't the greatest. I painted my nails the week Sandy came around, so there wasn't much sunlight... and on top of that, all my photos ended up turning a little blurry. But for the sake of showing the color, here you go!

This first one is most representative of the color you'll get:

This one shows the yellow-green tinge the polish has:

Lastly... I tried to do a sunlight picture!  It didn't quite work! But this color can appear darker or lighter depending on the lighting, and this picture shows that: 

At the beginning I kind of hinted that this wasn't the greatest Gelish polish to start with... and here's why:

• The color warps and wrinkles under the LED light if you apply it just a smidge too thick.  I managed to only mess up one of the first nails I did, but it made me on edge the whole time I was painting!
• It's very patchy for the first two coats... meaning you need three coats to get a good manicure.  I tried dry brushing later on when I needed to redo the nail that warped, and this helped a little. 
• The color also pulls away from the edge, at least for the first coat.  This means you need to do about two nails at once, and work FAST! and cure it, or the color will start to shrink away from the free edge of your nails.
• Because of the patchiness and everything else, it is harder to work the side and bottom edges of your nails to make them look nicely done.  If you don't have them painted how you want for the first coat, the color is so patchy that the next two coats probably won't be able to fix it.  If you're a pro this may not be a problem, but I'm a n00b to gel polishes, so this was a downfall for me. 

So there you go; there's quite a few downfalls to this polish.  On top of that, I almost felt like this gel acted more like a regular polish on my nails.  A few of my longer nails got cracks in the gel where the nail naturally bends after a few days; another layer of top coat fixed this up, but I had to remove the color by day 9 or so when the problem resurfaced.  After removal, I noticed that the edges of the problem nails had more cracks and flaking on the sides.  Now, it's possible that I could have not noticed this before I painted and that could have been the source of my problem, or it could be the gel itself caused it.  It's hard to tell. 

The color itself is a dark green creme color, it can play off as a darkened emerald green in some lights, but it really carries a little too much yellow and grey tones.  Someone described my nails as a "swamp green" color, and I guess that's pretty fitting!  A commentator online also called it the color of plastic fence covering...and that's also pretty accurate.

That totally does not sound like an appealing color for nails, but I think it's a nice color despite that.  It reminds me of leaves that darken before they turn in the fall, or certain types of pine needles in the winter time. 

I think it's a somewhat uncommon in the gel polish world, so you'll have to decide for yourself if it is worth the problems or not. 

Oh and I forgot... I did a video review of this polish, so if that was a little Too Long; Didn't Read for you, watch this instead!