Le Mini Macaron Gel Manicure Kit Review
This Macaron-Shaped Gel Manicure Kit Fits My Personal Brand, and It Gives Good Manis
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It's rare that you'll catch me without a manicure. Whether it's gel or regular polish from the salon or a quick at-home mani, I always like to have something on my nails. Here's why: first, my nails are very brittle, but when I have nail polish on, they're less likely to break; and second, my job involves me taking a lot of photos of products, more specifically holding products, and I feel like a little colour makes everything look better.
In between salon visits, I don't mind giving myself DIY manicures at home and consider myself to be pretty good at them. The only problem is they chip so easily that it can start to feel like a waste of my time to even paint my nails in the first place. That's when I started looking into at-home gel manicure kits and came across the cutest one I've seen thus far by Le Mini Macaron.
Le Mini Macaron Gel Manicure Kit
Le Mini Macaron gets its name from the macaron-shaped LED light. Unlike traditional LED lamps that are solely functional, the Le Mini Macaron Gel Manicure Kit ($35) is also just really, really cute. It comes in various colours and two sizes: small, which allows for curing one finger at a time, and large, for your entire hand. (I have the small pink lamp.) It's powered by a USB plug so you can take it on the go and even plug it into your laptop to use.
While the gel kits come with a bottle of polish, depending on which option you get, you can purchase more one-step gel nail polish shades separately. I typically stick to the same shades for my fingers — red in the fall and winter and light pink in the spring and summer. The Rose Créme ($12), Fairy Floss ($12), and Pomegranate ($12) shades are my favourites.
For a DIY mani, you start by applying an ultrathin coating of polish and curing it in the LED lamp for 30 seconds; you know your time is up when the lamp auto shuts off. After you repeat that on each finger, you can assess how many coats you want to do. Personally, I like doing two or three if the colour is super light. You may think curing one finger at a time would take a while, but the 30 seconds go by fast, and you can start painting the next finger while the one before it dries. My favourite part: the polish is quick drying, so there's no waiting around and fanning your hands frantically to keep from smudging.
The gel manicure lasts the standard one to one-and-a-half weeks, depending on how rough you are on your hands, and is practically chip proof. What more could you need?
