Say NO to Cheap Mani-Pedis!

OPI's Do You Lilac It?

At the seediest, skeeviest, grossest nail bars in downtown Toronto, you can probably get a mani-pedi for $30CAD, tax included (provided you pay cash).  In the lower-mid-range level, several steps up from those, at the still-affordable but clean places (like the one I go to), a mani-pedi costs $35.  Prices can go up from there, all the way to $100 or so.

So imagine my surprise when I found,
in fancy upstate New York (we're talking, like, Westchester, a rather affluent area), that there are nail bars that do mani-pedis for $23!  Tax included!  Pedis alone are $18.

How is a person/business supposed to survive on that? 
Well, the handiwork is vastly reduced so that the turnover rate can be higher, of course, so that the service you get is not even half of what you can do for yourself at home, your manicure and/or pedicure lasts for two seconds and as is often the case, things are not properly cleaned.

But I was at a nail bar with someone at their recommendation, so...I went for it.  There was a very limited colour selection - I've been spoiled by my own nail bar, where my esthetician always gets the newest nail polish collections and puts them front and centre on display.  I ended up choosing OPI's Do You Lilac It? because I wanted to try the pale purple from the Pirates of the Caribbean collection (Planks A Lot) and they did not have it.

The job was complete crap, as I knew it would be, but that was exactly what I expected at $23.  My manicure lasted a total of a day and a half before the polish started chipping and my pedicure lasted three days.  OPI polishes are known for having a very good consistency, being opaque almost always in one coat (at least for the cremes), and for self-levelling.  For some reason, there were some "bald spots" in my nail polish that are not visible in the photo - there were areas near the tip of my nails that were really thin, where light could shine right through the colour.  So there was that.  Maybe they put in too much thinner to save money?

The colour also didn't turn out to be very flattering on me.  I own and love A Grape Fit and I also like Planks A Lot very much, but Do You Lilac It? was much too pale.  It made my skin look really yellow (also not visible in the photo because I took it in bright light).  So I'll be sticking to A Grape Fit for my pale purple nail needs from now on!