Kiss Everlasting Gel Polish & My First Halloween Art of the Year

First of all, I have to say I'm overwhelm(ingly pleased) at the number of new gel polish brands I've seen popping up lately.  Essie just released their line of gel polishes, and China Glaze is getting theirs on the way.  Finger Paints released theirs over the summer along with Sally Hansen's gel line, and now Sally Beauty is selling another new brand called "ASP", too.

And NOW... now there's another brand you can get at the local pharmacy!  I spied the Kiss brand of gel polishes just the other week at Walgreens, although I'm sure they've been out for a little while already.  If I remember correctly, they were about $10--and although they are only the 9mL or .30 fl oz size (so basically, 3/5 the size of a full polish bottle), that's still the same size as every other pharmacy or Ulta brand gel, and it's the same or cheaper in price, depending on what brand you're comparing to.  I was also immediately taken in by the bottle's shape, too--obviously, Kiss is going for a parallel to CND's Shellac with their bottle shape.  Until now, I've only seen that with dubious foreign Ebay gel polishes!

Of course I had to pick the brightest and greenest color out of the bunch, and although summer's over, I decided to spice up the color for Halloween time. 

This is my first time doing Sharpie nail art, and it's not too great...but not too bad, either, in my opinion!  I'm left-handed, by the way, and I think you can definitely see a bit of a difference in the quality of my work depending on my hand, but I still think this nail art is easy enough to do with both hands!

Now, the review:

Kiss Everlasting Gel Polish in "Sweet" has a surprisingly great formula; despite it being a lighter, creme-formula color, two coats covered amazingly--however, I did go for a third due to some staining I wanted to cover up.  The color itself is just another spin on the popular mint color; it looks pretty bright in my photos, but it does have an ever so slight grey undertone, and it can look more blue or mint green depending on your light source--so cyan would be pretty apt of a color name for it. It is very, very similar to Gelish's spring release "A Mint of Spring"--maybe just a tad greener and greyer.

Oh, and I can't forget my thumbs!

For these mummies, I used Red Carpet Manicure "It's Not a Taupe".  This is a basic khaki colored creme gel polish.  The grey and yellow tones actually worked well to hide the redness of my fingers and blend in to make a "nude polish" on me.  And I'm not sure I ever thought of likening my skin to khaki.... but I think I just did!  Three coats did the trick for this one.

The nail art on my thumbs was done with Sharpie as well, except for the mummies' eyes, which are made with dabs of Red Carpet Manicure's "White Hot".

I'll be posting a video tutorial for this in the next few days, so hopefully I can encourage some others to attack their nails with permanent markers, too! :)