Nail Diary 11 : How to Modify Your Outgrowing Gel Manicures

Hi guys... I'm already back in Indonesia (in Jakarta, actually) but i'm still on vacay, so... No fresh posts yet, thankfully i drafted quite a bit of posts when i had the time! Let's start!

This is yet another post that i've drafted for probably almost a year (or even more than a year) but never gotten to write. I don't even know why i do this to some drafts, is it because i find the topic to be less interesting to write about? That's weird because i don't really write about anything that i'm not interested in *sigh*. Anyway, before this post started to sprout or grow a pair of wings and made its escape, it's about time for it to be properly worked on and published, once and for all!

You can judge the length of time i've postponed writing this post by the fact that i'm about to give you (sort of) a tip to modify your outgrowing gel manicures when in fact the last time i had a gel manicure was... wait let me think. August last year??? Wow, that means this draft truly is more than a year old *LOL* #hoarderproblems. 

Yeah, i went crazy over gel manicures on 2012-2013, but then i realized how damaging they are to my nails when done continuously so i decided i would only get them once in a while, every few months if i must. But i had been without them for more than a year now so i guess i'm cured of the addiction hahaha.

Anyway... A gel manicure, if done right, can last for up to a month for me. It's super crazy! While some of us cannot stand growing nail beds (like #Undecided) and would rush to the nearest nail salon to get the gel removed, there are others-who are more like me. We just couldn't be bothered to go to a nail salon and try to hold on to the extremely growing gel manicures for as long as we could. I got this idea to layer a sheer colored glitter nail polish over the growing gels to try to conceal them into looking like it was done on purpose :

As usual with older drafts, i apologize for the pictures, #Pink's photography skill last year is much worse than #Pink's photography skill this year!

I don't know how convincing it looks to you? But in real life, it really was quite convincing! Nobody suspected anything weird from it and even the nail expert, L, thought it was a purposefully done modern French manicure *snickered* *as if i can bother to do a French manicure by myself*.

So, this is how it actually looked before :

LOL

Pretty ridiculous looking, right?

Somehow when my nails were still uber long (because i let them grow as much as those nail beds showing) it looked less disgusting than that, but of course... There is a limit on where i could stand uber long nails. And it's VERY limited. I have super hard nails that i keep on accidentally scratching others and myself, so i usually keep them as short as possible *even though i've been accused of having all thumbs as fingers as a result of that*.

Sometimes even the best applications of gel manicures would start to peel off after i cut my nails, but somehow in this case they stayed stubbornly put. So i went on with that plan to apply sheer, glitter nail polish on top of them.

For this modification, i didn't want to use opaque colors. I know you can always apply any opaque colored nail polishes on top of gel manicures to change up the color (just in case you got bored of your current nail polish, i know most of you suffer from that illness of getting bored too fast :p *staring at Lina, hard*) but when your gel mani has grown as much as mine did, i think just applying another nail polish would end up with a weird result-you'd get an obvious rounded lines in the middle of your nails. Now, that wouldn't be pretty!

So, for me, i prefer a sheer colored (not clear/transparent though!) glittery nail polish. It doesn't even have to be an expensive branded polish!

My choice fell on this sheer glittery apple green nail polish. It's unbranded and actually was a free gift from buying Veet Hair Removal Cream :p

Don't you think it's uber cute for a free nail polish, though?

Then simply paint over on your nails like you'd do normal nail polish and viola!

A new nail art (well, sort of)

I think it's quite cute and i like how the sheer green polish change the pink tone as well :D

There are a lot of other (more creative) ways to modify your growing gel manicures, i read one (recently, so i actually came up with this much earlier *smug* *don't you just want to smack me for acting like i invented electricity or something*) that suggests you filling in the nail beds (only) with opaque, glittery polishes. That sounds cute and not too hard, so next time i have a growing gel manicured talons i'd give it a whirl!

Do you have any tricks for modifying your outgrowing gel manicures or you simply go to a nail salon ASAP?

#Pink