Round two
The flat direction stays as it is — this is a separate exploration. Each of these keeps the wordmark, the almond mark, and the clay, then pushes into three dimensions a different way. They are not variations on one idea; picking one rules the other two out.
Rebuilt on the light ground, so it no longer costs you the direction you already chose. The mark is real geometry with the C-curve of an actual nail across its width, and three finishes to compare — chrome is the thing she posts most, so this borrows from a nail trend rather than a web one.
Soft dimensional — domed, glossy, lit from above like a cured gel top coat. Depth comes from highlight and shadow rather than perspective. The warmest and most approachable of the three, and the closest to how the product actually looks.
Hard-edged depth. Type pushed back into space on a solid clay extrusion, cards that sit on physical drop shadows with no blur. This is the current direction with thickness added — the only one of the three that keeps the edge you asked for.
Prep, retention, repair, aftercare — what keeps a set healthy between appointments.
One design broken all the way down, from reference to the order of operations.
Structure, tooling, pricing, pace — the slow business of getting better.
Since you like 02 and 03, the honest answer is that they aren't rivals — Extruded is a layout system and Gel is a surface treatment, and they solve different halves of the page. Extruded for structure, Gel for the controls. Hard offset cards and extruded headlines carry the page; the domed, glossy treatment goes on the subscribe button and the price card, where you want a finger to land.
That split also fixes Gel's weakness. On its own it drifts toward salon pink, but used only on the interactive parts it reads as polish over a hard structure — which is literally what she does for a living.
Chrome v2 now sits alongside rather than replacing. It no longer forces a dark site, so it can be the mark and the hero object only — the metal against pale grey, the extruded layout beneath it. Three finishes are switchable above; my pick of those is Aura iridescent, because it carries the clay without spending the accent.