Years and years ago I was amazed by the process of getting a manicure with “tips”. Now the only tips I am interested in are steak tips. I think I was fascinated by the process of instant nails– but over time realized that I certainly didn’t need them and was pretty lucky to have nails that looked just fine with plain old polish.
Nowadays, my resistance to polish is the short life span. Washing hands 47,324 times a day means that a manicure lasts about two days before it starts chipping, and I’m much too obsessive/attentive to detail to ignore the chips. Once that starts, I just want the polish off.
In March I tried the OPI shellac polish. Since I was heading out to enjoy a few days away from kids and housework, I was willing to try it out. Whether it was the product or the application I’m not sure, but after about two weeks I was ready to take it off. It was starting to chip around the edges. I didn’t think that was a bad outcome, though. Two weeks of pretty was pretty good.
So a week and a half ago I went out with a girlfriend just to get pedicures, enough of a luxury in itself, and the ladies at the salon showed me their own nails and said that they’d had the same “Gelish” polish on for three weeks. Except that you could tell their nails had grown, they looked perfect. I was sold.
I took these photos last night– day 11. No signs of chipping or peeling. I keep re-examining because I’m waiting for it. Again, not knowing whether it’s the product or the application, I’m definitely more impressed with this round. I was just looking at the cost of the supplies to do it at home. Not cheap unless you had some girlfriends to split it with, but it’s lasting sooooo much longer than regular polish would for me. And I’ve spent the last 11 days doing all sorts of glamorous dish washing, laundry, kid washing, yard work… lots and lots of hand washing and soaking.
This is a little more of a close-up than I’m generally comfortable with, but this is a high-priority life-saving Public Service Announcement, so I’ll suck it up.
I only took about 3 dozen photos to come up with two that didn’t look completely awkward. Hand modeling is way harder than I’d have guessed.
The link for do it at home is not working…. I am curious how to do this I too have “nice” nails (no tips needed) but I have the same issue with polish coming off. I was told it is because your natural nails have oil just the same as skin so the polish doesn’t adhere very well. If you could let me know what the link was to I will search it.
Hi Tristan. I think I fixed the link. I think it requires a base coat, a color and a top coat and a UV lamp. Here’s a link to a how-to video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUpJ61mAAFU
Funny that you posted about this! I got a gellish manicure in May when I was in AZ for a wedding. Then I moved to Seattle and went to have my nails redone-the gellish lasted about 3 weeks, but I had outgrowth. Well, the process of getting the polish off was horrible! The woman soaked my nails in acetone and scraped at them to get the polish off. But, for some reason I decided to have them redone… Anyway, to make a long story short, to get the polish off at home, I filed away at it with a glass nail file. And after almost 2 months, my nails are still really thin and frail. :( I hope you have a better experience, but I won’t ever do that again!
I had the same out come as the gal above. The polish looks great (I only got about a week and a half out of mine thought) but once is does start to chip, or you just want it off, it is no fun at all. It’s like peeling fake nails off your real nails. It hurts and the aftermath is not pretty.
Hmmm. I can’t say I’m looking forward to the removal. But it’ll be interesting to see how it goes. Removing the polish in March was not great– but I didn’t do it the right way, I just soaked in the tub for a while and then mostly peeled the stuff off in sheets. I don’t think this would do that. Sounds like this will remove my fingertips, too. Cosmetic drama! So exciting! I’ll post an update when I get to that point. If I can still type.
I’ve been thinking about getting this done for a while and actually saw someone get them taken off the other day while I was getting a pedi. They put acetone-soaked cotton balls on each fingernail and covered the whole tip of the finger with foil wrap. After ten minutes they pulled the whole thing off and simply buffed the nail on top. I asked the girl that was doing my pedi and she said if the product is put on correctly there is no need for ANY scraping when taking them off. I’m not completely sold yet as acrylics destroyed my nails a few years ago and I’m still scarred from that. I have heard great things about ULTA’s line of nail polish so I might try that first.
I bought all the stuff and do my own nails at home! I chose Nail Harmony’s Gellish product after doing some online research. Check on my blog post about it all
http://2plusjilly.blogspot.com/2011/07/at-home-gel-nails.html
Oh man, I’m so glad your nails turned out ok when you took them off. I too got sucked into the allure of gel manicures but after two in a row my nails literally disintegrated. It took a couple months of TLC & some expired prenatal vitamins to get them back to good.
Walk away from the UV light Susan…walk awayyyy
Dunno Samstersophiemommy, I’m going to do it again at some point. Definitely liked the Gelish better than the OPI trial. Maybe if I avoid the back to back application?