You Didn’t Invent Nothin’

And neither did I — don’t misunderstand me there.

Back in nail school, they taught us to do “hot oil manicures.” Except we didn’t really use oil, we used a thick lotion.

Now, I really liked these better than traditional water manis. I liked that the lotion was far less likely to get spilled or splashed about. I just felt overall that it was a far more luxurious service, and that it was more effective at hydrating dry skin than soaking in water. So that’s the method I went with for my regular manicures even after I left school. But it took me about three minutes to stop using the little lotion heater dealy-bob. That thing was just too likely to get gunked up. I had to buy little plastic liners for it, and it didn’t seem entirely comfortable to rest your hands on it and soak just the tips of the fingers in the lotion. Overall, I just wasn’t impressed with it and it seemed more trouble than it was worth.

So I started slathering everyone’s hands with lotion and putting their hands in liners and hot mitts. Easy peasy, as they say. No more sliding the little heater back and forth between hands. Both hands could “soak” simultaneously. It just made for a better service.

When I found myself in a salon environment that allowed the space to do pedis, I decided to do my pedis pretty much the way I did my manis.

I never thought I was “inventing” or “developing” a new service. I didn’t realize that “waterless” manicures were considered avant-garde until I got online in ’99. And I certainly never thought that a “waterless” pedicure was going to be considered revolutionary.

I’m sure I wasn’t the first person who did it this way. Just like I wasn’t the first person to put glitter in my acrylic powder — in 1998, several years before it became all the rage and ended up being known by several different terms that I wasn’t hip enough to come up with.

And I was reading about “encapsulated” nail art before I even signed up for my nail course 22 years ago!

It’s crazy how many times I come across someone online spouting off about how they thought it up first. Sometimes girls younger than my entire career as a nail tech are spoutin’ off about how upset they are that the technique they “invented” is being copied all over the world without them being given proper credit.

Techniques and designs that I saw or used when I was in high school.

Just because you never knew of anyone who did it before you, doesn’t mean no one did it before you. It ain’t “new,” you’re just that far behind.