Tutorial: Silk Wraps for Broken Nails

You've been taking care of your nails. You've been moisturizing your cuticles. You've been using a glass nail file. You've stopped over-buffing. You've been using treatment basecoats and keeping your nails polished. You've stopped using your nails as tools. Despite it all, you look down one day and see a split spreading across one of your nails. What do you do? Cry? No, you fight back! For me, when it's a split on one of my fingers, I use Orly's Nail Rescue kit (it includes nail glue and powder; you brush the glue over the nail and stick it in the powder to create a hard, protective shield to hold the nail together), but when it's the thumb (which takes more abuse than other nails), I use a silk wrap. Below I will show you, step by step, how to use a few simple tools to keep the length of the nail and keep on truckin'!
Here it is, my sad, split thumb nail. You can see it better in the larger version, but there it is, the awful split along the right side of the nail. The horror!
Your tools: To perform this magic, you will need a set of Swiss Silk Wraps, available for about $5 at Sally's. One box contains 40 sticky-backed wraps in a variety of sizes. You will need gel resin, which is sort of like glue. I use ibd Brush-On Gel Resin, also available at Sally's for about $3. To trim the wraps, you'll want some small cuticle scissors. To finish the wrap and prepare for polish, you'll need a coarse grit (black) and fine grit (yellow) buffer block, both available at Sally's for less than a dollar.
Step 1: Select a wrap in the size closest to your broken nail. It probably won't be perfect, so trim the bottom and edges so it is just a tad smaller than the width of your nail. If it goes all the way to the edge and goes over the border of the nail on the sides, not only will the gel make it feel awkward, it will also carry the risk of lifting off the nail, which would rather defeat the purpose! Don't worry about cutting off any length, though. I actually have an easier time if I leave it long and worry about the excess later.
Step 2: Peel off the paper backing and stick the wrap on your nail. If you screw up, don't stress. You can take it off and replace it until it's positioned correctly.
Step 3: Trim the free edge as much as possible, but if a little is still left hanging off the edge, don't worry. You will clean it up later.
Step 4: Brush a thin layer of gel resin over the wrap, just enough to see that the fibers have been saturated by the liquid.
Step 5: Wait until the gel resin is dry (this can often take about ten minutes - do not be tempted by fast dry sprays that are sold near gel resin and nail glue; they dry the liquid too quickly which creates a brittle surface that can crack and lift off the nail. You have to be patient with this stuff.) Using the coarse buffing block, buff the edge of your nail to remove the excess from the tip and create a clean edge so that the wrap and your nail are flush. Also, buff over the surface of the nail a few times to smooth out the bumpiness and texture of the wrap that invariably occurs. Normally, you would not use this coarse of a buffer over a natural nail, but between the gel resin and the silk, you're not going to touch the actual nail.
You can usually stop here, but if you're really committed, like I am, apply another layer of gel resin, let it dry, and buff again. If you're going to be following this up with a creme finish polish, as I am, you may want to finish the buffing with a finer grit buffer so that you can't see the texture of the wrap through your polish.
And here it is with polish over it! Like the horrible split never happened! These hold up very well and I can usually keep the same one on through three or four nail polish changes even though I use pure acetone to remove my nail polish. When you are ready to take it off, the gel resin can be dissolved with acetone nail polish remover on felt so you can peel the silk off.

So there you go! Never fear the split nail again! We can rebuild you! We can make you stronger, faster! We can keep the nail length and stop the evil split from spreading! These wraps are so strong, that even if your nail breaks completely off, if you can rescue the piece that broke off, you can use a silk wrap to reattach it. Seriously!

I expect today may be a double post day after I finish the nail art I am plotting. I hope this tutorial helps you! Polish to the People!

Ulta Professional After Hours and a Word on Smurf Fingers

Today I have a picture and review of an Ulta Professional polish and then a word or two of nail polish removal advice for the people. So let's dive right in!

I had a very long and trying week, so I uncharacteristically left on my Funky Fingers Alice mani for a shocking three days, and I can report that the wear was excellent. I only started getting chipping on the finger currently sporting a patch over a split, and that isn't really the polish's fault.

The day I finally did get myself to change, I went with an old standby of laziness, the dark nail polish. Why the standby of laziness, you may ask? When I do not want to put a lot of work into removing polish to make a clean slate for the next color, I do it half-heartedly and make up for it with a dark color. The reason for this is Smurf fingers, which I will explain shortly.

This is a color called After Hours from a set of Ulta Professional minis called the Glam Goth collection (so, those of you who know me personally know that I was obligated by all forces natural and spiritual to buy these minis), so it can't be purchased on its own. Because there is no such thing as too much nail polish, I do not see this as an obstacle to its purchase. I used a flash picture for this color to really capture the sparkle in the dark blurple (nail polish lingo for a bluish purple) base. In bad lighting, this looks almost like a creme, but get it in some good light, and hello tons of blue and red shimmer! Like the other colors in this set, this is a truly stunning shade.

The one problem I did have with it is the brush. Now, I love the OPI Pro Wide brush, which many find to be way too wide, so I thought I would like this one. This brush is just about the same as the OPI, but somehow... different. Maybe it's fuller, or thicker, or maybe because it's on a shorter base, but I found it a bit unwieldy which accounts for the funky application around my cuticles. The good news is that even I, a serial, unapologetic three coat evangelist, only needed two coats for total opacity, which is good since the bottle is so small! I know, I say this like I will ever run out of it.

Now, a word on Smurf fingers. Smurf fingers are what occur when you remove a stubborn blue polish. There are alternative versions of this with other colors, notably red and neon pinks, and the concept is the same. When you try to remove the color with remover, it stains the skin around the nail, so you end up with tinted fingers that can ruin the look of your new manicure. You can't see it very well in this picture, but the cuticles on most of my fingers are blue from Alice, and all because I didn't do such a stellar job of removing it. If I had wanted to paint my nails with a pastel after and not have the horrible blue cuticles, I would have employed one of the following methods:

1. Nail polish removing tub of doom: At Target, you can buy this fabulous device that looks like your standard sponge in a tub remover, but is so much more. Instead of a sponge, it is a hole, not unlike the sarlacc pit in Jedi, surrounded by plastic bristles. It is filled with pure acetone, so not for the weak-willed. You stick your finger in, let the acetone dissolve the polish, and then scrub it off with the bristles. This thing is fabulous for glitter and dark polishes.

2. Protect the skin first: Alternately, you can slather your fingers and cuticles with cuticle oil or a heavy cream before using your standard removal method. Like putting vaseline on your forehead before dyeing your hair, this acts as a protective barrier and prevents the disintegrating polish from sticking to your skin.

I hope this dissertation helps someone else removing a dark nail polish. Keep an eye out for a truly shocking post I expect to make tomorrow when I put on a sheer, neutral nail polish! The humanity! Until then, Polish to the People!