Lesson Learned: Acetone is Your Friend

Do you see my stubby ole pinky nail?!?

(I’m wearing Revlon’s Starry Pink by the way. Soft, glittery, jelly, pink. Love.)

Of course the moment I decide to start a nail blog, my nails would start to betray me. Okay, that’s not really fair to my nails, because the reason I’m walking around looking like Stubby McStubberson is impatience.

A couple of weeks ago I was testing out the “Gelish sandwich” that has been quite the rage on makeupalley. The idea is to use the Gelish system with regular nail polish. You start with the Gelish base, cure it and then polish with the regular nail polish of your choosing. Once that’s completely dry you do a coat of the Gelish top coat and cure that. 

I never quite got it to work. 

1. I was using a 9 watt lamp rather than the 36 watt lamp recommended for use with the Gelish system. 
2. I was being impatient and didn’t let my regular nail polish completely dry before moving on to the Gelish top coat, so the polish would wrinkle underneath.

Fast forward to the removal process. Instead of patiently waiting for the acetone I was using to dissolve the gel, I started picking at it and ended up lobbing off three-quarters of my pinky nail. Oy! 

So learn from my mistake. Acetone is your friend. Let it do its work and you get to keep your nails.