How to make your nail polish last longer
Gel Nails at Home: A Simple DIY Guide for Beginners. Ladies I have another secret that I would like to share with you all for your nails. I was doing some research on nails and a basic manicure and how to up-keep your nails when you are usually busy.
Here are some tips to how to keep nail polish from chipping and how to achieve the best at home manicure.
Use Gel Polish
If you suffer from chipped nail polish, you may want to switch to gel nail polish as it lasts longer and performs better. It may be a bit more expensive, but the quality of your Gel Nails at Home will be much better than using regular nail polish.
In my opinion, the best gel nail polish is the one made by Gelish brands which has a far superior quality than other brands you may find on Amazon. They also have different ranges of products varying from nail color, led lamps and french tips.
Gel Nails Preparation
Buffing
Before Applying any gel polish, I have learned through trial and tribulation that it is so so important to buff the nails before applying gel polish and prepping the nail. Before I started doing this, I noticed that my at-home manicure kit did not last and the gel polish would life off from my natural nail and wouldn’t last longer than a week. This was because I was not buffing the surface of my nail prior to application.
By buffing the nail, I am referring to buffing the surface with a 100 nail file that you can fine easily at Sally Beauty. You want to buff down the surface of the nail so that it feels gritty and rough.
By doing this, it will allow the gel polish (base coat) to stick to the nail and it will not budge because it needs something to grip onto.
If you apply gel polish to a smooth surface, it has nothing to grip onto and will then lift off the nail very easily.
So always remember to buff the nail with a good file, you can also file the tips as well as you regularly would when filing nails, but always buff the surface of the nail when applying gel polish.
Use a Nail Primer
When using gels nail polish, it is very important to prep the nail before application. Always wash your hands before applying and make sure they are dry. should also use a nail dehydrator aka nail polish primer. What does nail primer do ?
It basically removes all of the natural oils that your nails produce, and allows the gel polish to stick to the enamel. You will then notice, less peeling or chipping because you primed your nails before application.
In the gelish starter kit , it comes with all four steps including the nail primer. But if you are using any other brand, you may have to purchase the primer separately. That is why I am mentioning it now.
Always Use a Base Coat
After prepping the nails, you want to set a foundation before applying color gel polish and use a gel nail base coat. I always love the way my nails look when applying a base coat. They become so shiny and appealing to the eye . But , I have to remind myself that this is just a preliminary step in the whole gel polish experience.
The base coat acts as a foundation for the gel color that you will be applying next and allows the color gel polish to bond to the nail. I have never applied gel color polish on the nail alone, but I can imagine that it would not come out right without prepping \priming the nail and applying a base coat. I hope you love it.
Apply Gel Nail Extensions
Gel extensions are fairly new the gel nail world , but there is also an alternative to gel nail tips and this is by using a soak off surface gel. Surface gel is very similar to a builder gel and is made by gelish nail polish. The only difference is that the surface gel can be soaked off and the builder gel needs to be buffed off.
How long do gel nail extensions last ? They can last up to 3 weeks, and this is why I love gel nails so much.
I am a huge fan of soak off gel, mainly because it doesn’t involve too much work to remove. All you have to do is soak it off in some acetone, and your good to go. You can also file off your top coat with an e-file but is catered to someone with more experience with gel polish.
Polygel Nails
There are also different types of manicure, another form of gel polish is polygel polish. Now I have never dabbled in this arena but with polygel, or builder gel you have to remove it with an e-file. As you can tell I am completely turned of at the idea of buffing of the hard gel from your nails .
It just doesn’t seem natural and I can only imaging how messy it would be. To me, soak off gel is the best thing since sliced bread! Lol
Back to the surface gel, it comes in a nail polish bottle and looks very similar to gel nail polish. If you want extensions, you may want to use nail forms which are adhesive tape that you apply to the tip of the nails as a guide to creating a tip extension.
There are some great tutorials on youtube that explain how to extend the nail with surface gel that may help you.
Using surface gel, is a great way to naturally extend the nail without getting too involved (ex. Polygel/acrylic nails). It Is als overy easy to remove and involves almost no mess.
I have recently experimented in created the short round gel extension design that you can find by gelish. Recently, I have simulated the same look because I wanted to try the new gel extensions that gelish recently made, but realized that I already have the surface gel and that would be a huge waste of money.
I am also finding that by using the surface gel with nail forms is a much cheaper option than gel nail extensions, as a bottle of Surface gel is only $25 and I have yet to know how long the bottle will last because I still have a good amount.
Conclusion
I hope that these nail tips have helped you decide on what the best option may be for you on Gel Nails at Home: A Simple DIY Guide for Beginners. I love a gelish manicure and nail kit and that is why I decided to blog about it and share my experience with using this kind of polish. Did you know that the average cost of a manicure can range from $40-60? You can do your own standard manicure for a fraction of the price. A gel manicure is so easy to do at home and with the use of a uv lamp, it can cut the cost of drying time down to one minute.
Now I detest using regular polish and the only place that I use regular nail polish is on my toes because I can just wipe them off with acetone. If you would like to own your own gelish starter kit and get started in nail care, you can purchase it here.
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