#NailFail- Don't DIY Fix a Gel Mani

The Claw of Shame (c) PipPepPop

     I got a gel manicure last week for a wedding. It was great! To clarify, it was as great as a gel manicure can be. It lasted about 5 days before the inevitable chipping began. This time, it was my thumbnails. They began losing chunky pieces right at the end of the nails, which is a nice change from the usual way I lose a gel manicure (pieces begin peeling away from the cuticle edge- ouch)! I thought I could solve my nail problem the same way I fixed my toes.  I touched up my big toes with a slim pink line on the edge with a glossy gel-like topcoat to seal in the new paint. Spoiler alert, I could not achieve this lofty beauty goal.

     The gel manicure itself is a fickle beauty routine. It essentially gives you quickly dried nails with a strong topcoat. It lasts more days than a standard manicure and is less mess  than some more invasive nail procedures. The only downsides are the potential skin cancer in your hands from the UV light (I always slather sunscreen on my hands before going to the salon), and the sometime painful process of removing gel from your nails. I've perfected the art of the gel home removal, but sometimes it's more of a science. It depends on the amount of layers the technician has placed of gel and color on you hand, and sometimes pure luck. See below for more details.

My other nail obsession: nail polish stickers (c) PipPepPop

    Back to my story.  I painted a think pink line on my thumbs (see above) and considered letting it dry. But, I worried the new polish would sit on top of the shiny gel layer like goop. I reached for my handy gel-like nail clear coat and swiped away. Here's where things went haywire. The clear coat looked good for a few hours, until it dried and became almost brittle. My shiny thumbs now have cracks in the top coat and my gel mani is officially DOA. They are very scratched and rough to the touch now. With some handy internet research, Allure taught me that a regular polish can be liquid-based for up to 24 hours. If done correctly, a gel-like coating can be applied to a regular manicure, but it's all a game of chance. So, I may have inadvertently made my mani worse by mixing a hard cover with an improperly dried top coat. Alas, I may need a break from gel for a while. I'm sticking to easy-to-remove metallic polishes for the fall.

Cleaning Gel off Your Nails: Step by Step
1. You will need: acetone-based polish remover, cotton swabs, tinfoil, a nail file, a small wood nail poking stick (a dowel with a sharp end) and patience.
3. Roughly scrape the nail file over the top of our nails to begin breaking up the gel.
2. Soak the cotton swabs or cotton circles (my fave) in a few drops of nail polish. They just need to absorb some of the remover or they'll drip.
3. Cut or rip small rectangles of tinfoil for the next step.
4. Wrap the soaked cotton around each nail and set with small foil caps.
     The closer your fingers look like little aliens. the better.
5. Sit for at least 20 minutes. Let the acetone soak. It will get in your nose.
6. Polish will be ready to prod with the wood stick it starts to separate from the nail bed.
7. Hopefully your polish is very loose and comes off clean from the nail with one jab with a wood stick. If not, repeat the process.
8. If you have given up, I found a battery-operated foot pumice can help at getting stubborn bits of gel off your nails.