Progress?

It's been a week and half since I took off my last set of glue-ons and started using Dermelect.  Just to remind you, here's what I started with:

and here's where I am today:

Both pictures are of my naked nails.  I do have Mango Mend on in the second picture.  As you can tell by the cut on my index finger cuticle, the cold weather is really drying them out. 

I titled this post with a question mark because I'll occasionally get discouraged, but I think they are actually doing pretty well. 

Also, in the interest of total disclosure, I am also using Sally Hansen Nail Nutrition 1-2x a day.  My finger tips hurt so badly, up to a couple days ago, that I needed some fast growth.  The NN gives me pretty fast growth, but my nails are not much stronger.  I think the Dermelect products are what's helping with that.

Lastly, I applied my coat of Dermelect Launchpad and my coat of Dermelect Makeover, then I decided to put some color on my hideous nubbins.  I used Essie Porcini.  It's a pretty taupey, mauvey pink with gold micro-shimmer.  It looked better in the bottle than it did on my nails, but it wasn't a bad color at all.  The one thing I didn't like was that my polish looked glumpy (gooey+clumpy) and I was reminded why I never liked polishing my natural nails.  However, I'm hoping that in the next few months after all the ridges and bumps are gone my polished nails will look much better. 

Also, the one problem I'm having with the Dermelect products is a lot of bubbling after I apply the topcoat (High Maintenance).  Their info states that it's fast drying, but I'm finding drying times to be a bit slow, but the main problem is the bubbling.  Seriously, it's worse than the bubbling I always got with Seche Vite.  I don't know if that's because it's a naturally thick product or if there is some other reason.  I had to remove my Porcini mani within 30 minutes of application due to the bubbling.  Here's a pic, though I doubt if you can see the bubbling.  Maybe on 1-2 of my fingers.

This mani is 1 coat Launchpad, 1 coat Makeover, 1 coat Porcini (could have used a 2nd, but I don't like using too much polish on my natural nails) and 1 coat of High Maintenance TC.  Application on the Essie was fine, but I hate Essie's brushes.  I can never get the right amount of polish on them.

Tonight, I will apply another coat of the Dermelect base coats/ treatments.  I wish I hadn't had to take them off to begin with, but the bubbling was too bad.  I plan on retrying the HMTC a couple more times, maybe with a thin fast dry TC over it, to see if that helps with the bubbling.  I'll let you know if anything changes.

EDIT: I tried using a thin fast dry top coat over the Dermelect High Maintenance top coat and it made the bubble issue go away.  I used Beauty Secrets from Sally's.  Nails dried very fast due to the Beauty Secrets TC and feel very protected thanks to the HMTC.