CND Solar Nail Yellowing & Buffing Guide - Home Application Troubleshooting

Question
"Hi, I do my own nails here at home. I recently purchased CND Radical Solar travel kit from ebay. I also purchased CND solar nail clear powder from a local nails supply store. I love the CND product the only thing is that after a week my nails turned yellow. Was it something I used? Products used Radical SolarNail Liquid, CND Scrub fresh, CND nail prime and the CND clear nail powder. Also what grit number of buffer should I use to take off the scratches from the filing? I was observing at a salon an orange squared buffer and a blue buffer.Oh yes and I used a drill with buffer and buffing cream for shine. Plz Help!"

Answer
Genuine CND products rarely suffer yellowing, so my bet is that the kit you purchased had been sitting on the shelf WAY too long! And/or had been stored improperly by the supply house, probably being allowed to sit in a warehouse where it reached high temperatures-- 85F plus.

Other culprits behind yellowing are contaminated products or brush-- if the liquid gets gunked up or if your brush has had monomer dried in it.

You don't mention if you used any sort of top coat? Did you apply polish over the acrylic-- dark polishes can stain the acrylic and you'll have to buff it down. If you applied top coat, did the actual acrylic underneath yellow? Or did the yellow come off when you removed the topcoat?

If you want to wear them without any polish or topcoat, you will need to buff them to a very high shine with a 3 or 4 way buffer. I wouldn't use any buffing cream with acrylic, I'm not sure if this is what caused the yellowing or not, but I've never heard of any company recommending buffing cream with their acrylic.

To remove scratches, you'll need to use several files and buffers in graduated grits. Start with a coarse file (or drill# to do most of the work, then go over the nails with a medium-fine file #180 grit), then buff with a standard white block buffer-- or the black block buffer with the orange middle-- then move to a fine grit buffer, then finish with a 3-way buffer. Use every single one of the sides of the 3-way from roughest to smoothest. You'll get a very smooth finish and a high shine.