Monday, December 23, 2013


I spent this weekend trying to get everyone's holiday nails done in time for Christmas (and yet I STILL haven't done my own! Those go on tonight!). We're leaving to go out of state and visit the in-laws in a few days, and my fiancée has decided to let her nails grow out a bit for our upcoming trip. Then, the day before I was set to do her nails... one of her nails ripped off straight down to the quick.
She was understandably upset and while she did NOT want to file all her nails down, she also didn't want one gross nubby nail and asked me if there was anything I could do. It got me thinking. Kim at Ten Little Canvasses just let me know about an "AcryGel" method on YouTube. I thought maybe I could combine that with a plastic tip. I picked up acrylic powder and plastic tips from Sallys. I cut the tip down and glued the tip on to her nail stump with nail glue (after filing down the well to help it blend into her nail bed), then did the Foundation/Acrylic powder application (shown in the previous link) twice over the top of the whole nail and tip. I then did one more coat of Foundation, cured, and applied 2 coats of Structure to make sure that baby had a ton of support. I applied TIO, cured, and then worked on filing the nail down into the proper shape. One I felt I had a good shape, I applied my color gel polish as normal. So far it seems really strong. If it works out well I'll do a more thorough, visual tutorial.
Gelish White Icicle Ice Nails
Can you guess which one is the AcrylGel false tip? The middle one. :) I went with full glitter on that nail to mask my unprofessional blend line. ;) She told me she wanted white nails with an "ice" theme, so she basically got a lot of silver glitter ;) The manicure uses 3 coats of Sheek White, loose craft store silver holo glitter, and Am I Making You Gelish?. The Middle and Thumb nails have alternating layers of loose craft store silver holo glitter and Am I Making You Gelish? to get a really dense glitter look. For the Pinky nail, I literally picked out large glitter pieces from Am I Making You Gelish? and placed them on the nail. The Ring finger is using foil from the Gelish Foil Nail Art Kit (you can check out my tutorial on that over here).

And here's a bonus Christmas/Gryffindor nail set I did for my roommate this weekend:
Gelish Christmas Gryffindor Red and Gold Nails
I used 3 coats of Red-Y And Waiting and scrubbed a gradient with loose craft store glitter across all nails except the Ring finger. I also topped those nails with a coat of All That Glitters Is Gold. In the Ring finger I scrubbed loose craft store glitter into the Foundation layer, added a layer of All That Glitters Is Gold, then scrubbed loose craft store glitter into the polish layer, and added another layer of All That Glitters Is Gold. All the holo glitter in the All That Glitters Is Gold polish made it difficult for the camera to focus, but man her nails are mega-glitzy when they catch the light!

3 comments:

  1. Hello, I love your blog. Your work with gelish is great. I do my nails in gelish and i have to my little blog but in spanish :), there are not many blogs dedicated exclusively to the world of gel polish so, you work that help me a lot. (Sorry for my english) In relation of this manicure is beautiful, is A queen of ice and even could be used for new year and very gold work with the tip extention, congratulations and happy hollidays!
    PinNails.

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    1. Thank you for stopping by! Ooooo I love "The Ice Queen" for this mani. The Gelish Christmas manicures on your blog look amazing! I'll definitely check your blog out - you're right, we need more blogs dedicated to gels. :)

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    2. That is! "The Ice Queen" i put in the other way, sorry, buy you understand me :)

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