This year’s competition circuit introduced us (Me anyways) to a new style competition, the Mirror Image. The image above is of the set I did in Las Vegas this year. It’s hard even for me to tell which nail is which. I did really like this one. As a reminder for some of you that don’t know, it included all sorts of different techniques. Tip and overlay with gel and liquid and powder, sculptured gel, and L&P.

Now you all know I practice on fingernails getting ready for competition and this particular competition was no exception. One note before I get into this story, when I practice competition, I almost never put a primer on the model because more often than not, I remove the nails right away. And no primer makes it easier to remove the enhancements.

The problem with practicing gel is that you can not soak it off with acetone when you’re done. I try to practice on the same models that I will use in competition so I can have a true example of what the finished result will be, but it’s not really a good idea to put gel on your model a couple weeks before competition. Because gel must be filed off (my gel anyways- I don’t use a soak-able) and I don’t want to take any chances on injuring my models’ fingers or nails.

I heard rumors about some neat little product you could rub into the nail plate and the enhancement “would just pop right off,” but could never actually find it and also a trick of applying nail polish to the nail before applying the enhancement would enable it to also “pop right off.” But after trying this technique I realized that it wasn’t going to work either. So after much trial and error, I finally found a suitable alternative.

Believe it or not, it turned out to be your everyday garden variety brush-on nail glue. Two coats of that, slap your gel on and when you’re ready to soak, seven minutes in the acetone and that gel enhancements truly does “Pop right off!”

I haven’t tried it yet, but I bet it would work for any type of nail enhancement including acrylic.

Keep practicing

— Lynn