Sunday, March 10, 2013

Desperate Things I Did To Preserve My Gel Manicure

Hello there! I'm so sorry this blog has become the redheaded step child since I started writing for things that are... I don't want to say more important, but I mean more important. Actually I really like redheads, so I'd probably be way nicer to the redheaded step child than the boring brown haired biological children. Maybe that's not a good analogy. What I'm really trying to say is I still care for this blog in the way the Dursley's cared for Harry Potter, like I'm willing to make it live in the closet, but I'd be kind of sad if it was ever in mortal danger. It's not going anywhere my attention is just mostly elsewhere at the moment.

So today we're going to talk about how to extend the life of your gel manicure if you absolutely can't afford to get it re done but refuse to walk around with chipping nails. Some how I ended up on the LIRR the other day without any polish on my thumb nail and so something had to be done. I can not deal with chipping nails, you guys.


Here is what I Frankensteined together to keep it on. In order.

Acrylic glue- A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away I wore fake nails. I still had some of the glue lying around, so when the edges of the gel started to lift in that telltale "I'm about to fuck your shit up" way, I stuck the tiniest bit of glue under the raised portion and pressed down till I glued the gel to my nail. Yeah. I don't think you're supposed to do that ever and I have no idea what unspeakable horrors my next manicurist will wish upon me now, but it worked. Instant gratification is yay.

Clear Topcoat- As the rest of the manicure started to follow suite I decided to just coat everything down with a thick top coat. This seemed to prevent further flaking.

Repainting- So I thought the whole topcoat thing was going really well for a few days and then my entire thumbnail fell off. Well I mean all of the polish fell off. But I scared you for a second right? That was fun. So anyway that happened and I was about to go shoot photos for an article on xoJane and I was freaking out. So I went into Sephora and used their testers to paint my thumb a very similar shade to what the gel was. It was a really similar shade and most normal people would have accepted it and left it at that but I'm a freak who saw that the new color was slightly more green when you turned it upward in the light so I just threw a coat of the new color over everything.

Fine Glitter Topcoat- So I did the shoot and whatever and it stayed on and looked fine so i was happy. On the way home however I realized I smudged it and didn't have the same color because it lived at Sephora. So I just threw a fine dark glitter over everything.

Large Glitter Top Coat: Then surprise everything started peeling again! So I threw the glitter side of those Revlon moon candy two sided nail polishes over everything and it's stayed on. It looks nice. I have to get these damn things done again eventually but so far so good!

There are so many different things on my nails right now I don't even know what's going on, but I kind of dig it. My nails are having an existential crisis but I'm not anymore because I decided that this morning and I'm sticking to it.

The moral of the story is to just throw a bunch of glitter on and keep going. Everything will be ok.