Saying Goodbye to My Nails

After three months of having the most beautiful, pointy, red nails, it was time to say goodbye.

On April 23rd I had my first set of gel nails put on, at Tootsie Toes in San Francisco. What color to choose? I looked at dozens of colors before settling on a blood red— "Can't go wrong with classic."

The process was a blur (a 2 hour blur) and afterwards, I got in my car— GIDDY with my new nails and just sat there, admiring them.

Here are my nails, minutes after I got them:

They have been so awesome, the best accessory ever. I can feel like an evil witch or I can feel glamorous, like Joan from Mad Men. It adds an element of femininity I've never had with my nails— it's like having long mermaid hair.

What was harder to do with long nails?

1. Texting
2. Pushing the seat belt button
3. Getting my contacts out

The first night I had my nails, I could NOT get my contacts out, and I just freaked. "What have I done?!" I figured it out eventually, though.

Here are my nails, after my natural nails had grown a bit, underneath. You can now see my nail beds and "moons":

^This was probably after a month and half. As my natural nail grows, the gel nails grow with them, so they start to get longer and longer— slowly.

I went back to Tootsie Toes to get a "fill." This means they  file down the gel nail a little, strip the old color, and then re-paint. They never actually take OFF the gel nail, though.

This is what it looked like, afterwards. Slightly different red this time:

 


Just like new!

What was easier with long nails?

1. Tickling
2. Typing
3. Running my nails through my hair

I LOVED typing with long nails, feeling the "clack clack" noise they'd make on the keyboard.

Here are my nails in NY:

Then in mid-July, it was time to take them off. My real nails had grown almost as long as the gels, underneath. I had a couple incidents where the gels (now at their greatest length) got caught on the lip of the car door and also when opening a soda. SO painful. I was fortunate that my gels didn't "lift" off.

I made an appointment to get the gels taken off. I had the option to have a new set put in, but I'm going to let my real nails have a few cycles before putting gels on again. Keep 'em healthy and strong.

Taking the nails off took an hour, but was completely painless. The girl was very nice and filed the color off, then soaked the gel off in acetone, then cleaned up my nails and cut them.

Here's the color coming off:

Here are the remains:

I thought my nails were going to be yellow and disgusting underneath, but not really. Here they are, now. You can see the lines where the gels used to be, faintly:

So that is the end of my gels story. I can't wait to get another set! Maybe by Oct? I'm taking color suggestions :)