Nail extensions – there is so much that we have heard about it, starting from it makes your nails brittle to the various infections they can cause. But before we get into any of those details, I’m going to tell you why I got them. This was about 5 years ago when I made the decision to get these. I know I am making it sound too huge, but at that time it seemed like it. I was a chronic nail biter (trust me if there was a ‘anonymous’ club I’d probably be in there biting my nails), and that not only ruined my nail beds but my confidence. To begin with, in my teens I wasn’t the most feminine looking person around and though it shouldn’t, it did bother me a lot. I felt like my hands looked like male hands.
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Anyway, now that the sappy part of the story is over, I coaxed my mother at that time into letting me go in for the extensions. Not one to stop me from trying, she helped me find the best place to get these done. Now let’s break things down a little bit. Extensions are all the same, they are plastic/poly fiber nails that are stuck on your original nails. Now here is where people get a little iffy. These nails are shaped in a way where they do not cover your nail bed or your cuticles. So once these are stuck on and filed so that the edges don’t stand out a lot, there are 2 types of coating you can get. There is a gel coating or an acrylic coating. Acrylic is harder while gel is more fluid. The best though is a combination of these 2 where the acrylic solution is put at the tip and the gel is closer to the nail bed.
Also Read: How to Remove Acrylic Nails At Home
This is the variety that I got done. Again another misconception that people have here is that, they buff this solution into your nails, no they do not do that. They buff the top of the gel/acrylic base so it evens out, they don’t even touch your nail beds. Immediately after I got them done, they looked supremely stunning and felt as weird. For a person who had bitten into her nail beds, this look was bizarre. Typing felt weird, holding things felt weird but I couldn’t stop staring at how gorgeous my hands looked! Of course there were instructions that I had to follow, like do not dip your hands in turmeric otherwise they might stain yellow. If that does happen, take acetone free nailpaint remover and gently take the stains off. I have a personal trick for this though, once you come back after getting your extensions/overlay/gel nail paint manicure, add a top coat to your nails. That way if there are stains, you can just take the top coat off and apply a fresh coat. (You’re welcome.) Apart from that, the usual – do not do anything rash, try and not use your nails to lift things and so on.
After that my nails grew out, I switched to overlays, which means that now on the base of my original nails they put a gel solution and sealed it to make my nails harder.
Now, getting down to brass tacks.
Pros
Your hands look manicure fresh at ALL times.
Apart from the initial discomfort, they do not deter you from doing anything.
You can still get regular manicures and change your nailpaints as often as you’d like.
For people who are chronic nail biters like me, this definitely puts a stop to that.
In the long run if you maintain it properly, your nail beds definitely improve.
Cons
Maintenance – That’s a pretty penny every 3-4 weeks when you need to get them touched up.
If the extensions break, they do hurt a little more than normal nails breaking.
If you go for a daring look or brighter nailpaint, the grow out looks more prominent and you will have to go for touch ups more often.
If you go on too long between touch ups they tend to chip and start looking bad.
So there you have it, the good, bad, yay and meh about nail extensions!
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