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Saturday 17 January 2015

GellieBeans Black Licorice Swatches + Review

Hi guys,
I have another gel post for you today. this one is featuring a relatively unknown brand called GellieBeans. GellieBeans names all their colours after different types of lollies and this one is called Black Licorice. It's kinda sweet how they do that! :P

GellieBeans Black Licorice


GellieBeans is an online only brand as far as I'm aware and comes from the USA. I have about 7 of their gel polishes but have only tried two colours so far. I buy mine from Ozsale where they're normally $7 each. Quite cheap for gel, but considering they're only 3.7ml bottles you get what you pay for. However, I prefer to pay say $20 and get three small bottles rather than 1 big bottle due to the larger colour selection. Also, with gel you really don't use that much polish and I bet these will last quite a well. The website touts 20 manicures per bottles but I am not that optimistic!

GellieBeans Black Licorice - Indoor Natural Light
From the two colours I've tried from this brand I have to say that the formula is really smooth and easy to handle. I love love love the small brushes as it's easier to get a nice line around the cuticle, especially on my pinky nails. Because gel doesn't dry when exposed to air the small brush doesn't inhibit application and cause streaks like it would with regular polish. the major differences I found with this polish is the opacity. If you use a light colour the formula is quite sheer, with a dark colour it's a lot more opaque.

GellieBeans Black Licorice - Sunlight
Black Licorice was opaque in 3 coats for me and flowed really well onto the nail. the first coat was quite streaky but after that it evened itself out nicely. I used my Gelish lamp to cure which has a 45 second timer. For the third coat of colour I doubled the curing time as darker colours can take longer due to their opacity. When I applied topcoat I did have some black rub off onto the brush, which I attributed to the tacky layer left on the nail. This came off the brush with the application of a second layer of top coat. I've decided to use 2 thin layers rather than 1 thick layer for gel top coat as this avoids pooling in the side walls and thick tips.

GellieBeans Black Licorice -Sunlight
Now onto the colour. In the indoor photo this colour was a deep black and I didn't think much of it. When I went outside to hang out my washing I looked at my nails in the sun and saw that the colour is actually a really dark dusty navy blue. You might be able to see it in the photo above, it's definitely not black. This is only apparent in full sunlight though. In all other lights the polish appears black. I can't say much about the wear as I only applied the polish today. there isn't much in the way of reviews for this brand, or swatches for that matter so I thought I'd put this out there for anyone that wanted to see the colour. I should also note that I don't use the GellieBeans base or top coat, I use my Gelish ones as they work for me and I don't want to accumulate more gel than I need. This brand seems quite compatible with Gelish and the colour cures properly from experience. We shall see how the wear time goes!

GellieBeans Black Licorice - Sunlight
All in all I am very happy with this brand and I will probably buy more colours! I'm also looking forward to the nail art I can do over a black base!
Have you tried GellieBeans? What do you think of mini gel bottles?

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