The Great Experiment: The Removal

I know this is VERY much past due, but it's the holiday season, and I work retail.

That pretty much excuses everything, don't you think?

Just in case you missed the first part...  and the second part....  this little series has been about a new "polish" technique called shellacking.    I'll be succinct.  I LOVE IT.

With bright, bold color, my nails stayed flawless and shiny for 2 whole weeks.   I'm on my second color now, more of a dark cranberry red color, and when it comes off in about a week I'm going with a French manicure using the shellac method.  Can't wait!

But you want to know about the removal, right?

Well, your sweet little fingertips all go into little remover-soaked sleeves, and while my Nail Guru Stephanie and I were discussing what color to go with next, my nails were letting go of the last color.

When these came off, Stephanie gently nudged the little bit of remaining color off my nails -- no hard scraping, or big machinery, or anything else that would damage my nail beds at all.

I've had two sessions now, and just so you know I'm being completely honest, I'm going to lay out the best parts and the downsides (because nothing is perfect).

I am horribly bad on my nails.  I forget or choose not to wear lotion, and I abuse my nails in unspeakable ways.  The shellac did exactly what I hoped it would do:  retained its true color, never lost its shine, and  protected my nails.    I cannot remember a 3 week period EVER that I haven't had little nicks or chips on my fingertips that required filing to smooth away.   The first go-round, I did have to file down one rough spot that happened when a sharp knife I was using sliced just a wee bit the side of a nail; and on Friday I picked up a very large, very heavy book wrong at the store, and the nail on my right thumb broke fairly badly.

The good news is that I was able to clip it down and file it smooth with no problem.  There is one area of my nail that lost its polish where the break happened, and this leads me to one of the downsides.

If this had happened with normal polish, I would have spent part of my day yesterday at home removing the color and slapping on something else until I could get back.  Because removal is something that needs to be done at the salon (I've read of workarounds, but I'm not inclined to try them because I am a manicure idiot), you're sort of stuck until you can get an emergency appointment!

If I had some major thing to do that required perfection, I would have called to get one of those, but as it happens, and because the defect is on a thumb it's not as obvious as it would be if it were on one of the other fingers, I'm content to wait until my next appointment.

Because I don't take the sort of kind care of my nails I should, I am probably Stephanie's worst nightmare.  I doubt this will apply to many of you, but I will not have a bright/deep color applied again unless I am having the full manicure.  She tells me that we will tame the beasts that are my overachieving cuticles, and I believe her, but I'm going to stick to a pattern of neutrals/clears for times that I'm only having a polish change.

So -- on a scale of 1 - 10 -- I am placing this new thing at a 9.58.

And looking forward to another trip back for my next nail adventure!

One Week In....

Last Thursday I got a shellac manicure from Stephanie Gregory at Amplify Salon & Spa here in town.  These are supposed to last two weeks with no chipping or degradation of color or shine.  I told you then that I would keep you posted on how it was holding up, so here goes....

Over the past 7 days I have wrapped dozens of books at the store.  This aspect of the season is the chief reason I have not bothered with manicures of any sort for years during the holidays.  Color would wear off every time I had to use my fingertips to smooth the paper, and something about wrapping paper dried my nails out so badly that they were prone to breaking and peeling and chipping.  Using lotion to keep cuticles and hands replenished is a trick when you need to handle books -- unless whatever you've used has a good chance to fully absorb, you just don't want to to do this because the residue can mark a book.

Well, amazingly, 7 days in the only evidence that there is any age on this manicure at all are the nailbeds, which have (of course, and as expected) grown out a little bit.  If I were not wearing a big color, I seriously doubt i'd notice it nearly as much -- but even what I do notice is only because I am watching it with eagle eyes!  Most folks don't even notice it unless I point it out.

There is one miniscule area of wear on one fingertip.  When I say miniscule, that means I didn't even notice it until I started really studying my fingers for purposes of writing this update.

The color is as true red as it was the minute I walked out of the salon, and the shine has not "matted out" a whit.   There hasn't been the slightest transfer of color from my nails to wrapping paper (which always happens with regular polish).  The only nail snag I have had at all this week happened when a knife I was using scored the tip of a nail -- and I was able to lightly file it down to smoothness with no problem, and without compromising the integrity of the shellac.  (This is actually where that one tiny area of wear is, by the way.)

Women who take extraordinary care of their hands -- cuticle oils, lotions, always wearing household gloves when their hands are going to be in dishwater -- might not even have these tiny issues -- and certainly someone whose nails are slower to grow might not, either. 

In short (okay, so it's too late for that, exactly) my shellac manicure has exceeded every expectation I had for it, and I am completely pleased.

The Great Experiment

My very most favorite salon, Amplify, is offering a new sort of manicure that is called shellac.   I run hot and cold on making my nails all fancy, mainly because a really nice manicure gets ruined so quickly.  For those who don't realize this, something unkind happens to fingernails as one gets more fully mature, and the ridges alone make keeping a really pretty manicure difficult.

Even when my nails are at their healthiest and strongest, holidays in retail are murder on them.  We offer free gift-wrapping at the store, and as the requests for that heat up, the nails just get ruined.  It's just not ever been worth it to try to keep my nails looking pretty from mid-November until after the first of the year.

Anyway,  the owner Jami and I talked about it, and she had Stephanie (one of the nail artists) call me.  She put some of my biggest concerns to rest, and I decided to take the plunge.

I decided to document the first application and its wearability, because some of my friends around the country have been interested, but nobody particularly wanted to be The First.

Hey.  I figure if it stands up to the torture it's going to go through, then for everybody else it's going to be life-changing in a "this really isn't important, but it's cheaper than a facelift for a little vanity boost."

So.  Here we go.

I arrived at the salon this afternoon to find out their power was out, and I came home disappointed.   (The shellac machine needs electricity to run!)  I had scarcely settled in with my cup of coffee when they called to say, "Come back!  We have power!"   Run back I did, and I took these with me.

My nails were in horrible shape, with peeling and ridges beginning to cause little snags and tears, and I was having to perform triage on them daily.

The special stuff that has to be used for this process has at least one potential drawback:  a sort of limited supply of color.   That's not a huge problem for me, mostly -- I'm pretty traditional, generally opting for neutrals, or clear.   Stephanie tells me that she can mix colors by layering, too.  Again, this was, for me, not a sticking point.   She took extraordinary care with a basic manicure:  shaping, whipping my cuticles into shape, but nothing out of the ordinary had to be done to my  nails before the application began.

This is a HUGE plus in my book.  I don't want my nails damaged, and I don't want them looking fake.  I just want my nails to be presentable, and pretty.

Stephanie began the process, which involved a base coat followed by "curing" in the special shellac machine.  This took practically zero time.  This curing process happened again after each application of color as well.

There's no heat involved, no windy breezes -- just incredibly brief exposure to UV light.  When I say brief I mean probably less than 10 minutes per hand.

When it was all finished I got up to get my purse and started to hand it to Stephanie so I could ask her to dig into my wallet for my debit card and keys, and she said, "Nope -- you are totally dry and set, and you can do that."

Oh. My.  She was not kidding.  The color is incredible, and shiny wet looking, but I dug my wallet out, grabbed my keys, ran my fingers through my hair -- all with absolutely no effect on my nails!

So, which color did I pick?

This looks a little orange, but I assure you -- it is FIRE ENGINE RED, and it is just glorious!

I thought of clear; I thought of the neutral shade that looks like what I usually default to; I thought about the dusky pink-ish color.   Truly I did, but I picked the red for two reasons:

First, this test will be easier to follow if there is COLOR on my nails.

Second, why the heck NOT?

I'll keep you posted how this all actually DOES, but in the meantime, a huge thank you to Jami Lewis, owner of Amplify Salon and Spa; and to Stephanie Gregory, Fingertip Wizard!

Have questions? Post them in the comments section, and I'll answer what I can 

(no technical stuff, of course, but just real-world girlfriend type stuff.)