Questionhey.i fell like i have waisted my money on a course with gel nails.can you tell me techniques to do a perfect smile line i pink and with nails?detailes and lots of them is most wanted so i can pratice and learn it from bottom to top.what is impotend and why and what is not and why . have a nice day.
regards solveig .denmark
AnswerThe problem with gels is that as soon as you get your smile line the way you want it, it starts to level out again and by the time you place the nail under the UV light, the gel is no longer crisp where you put your smile line.
There are a couple of ways you can deal with this. First, you can try a "reverse application method." This is when you do the pink first. You need to use a thicker gel for the pink portion and put it on the nailbed. Then swipe the free edge off and cure. So it looks like someone broke just the white part off their nail. Then, after you have cured the pink, you can use a file to refine the smile line a little bit. Then put the form on and sculpt the free edge out of white gel. Then ovely with a clear coat, cure. Voila! This method really only works if you are sculpting with the gel, not so well with tips.
What I finally found that I LOVE is called "Paint on White gel." I know you work with many different manufacturers in Europe, so I don't know what brand you are using now or what you have available to you, but many companies are now offering POWs. (Paint-on whites) They usually come in polish bottles and brush on like polish, but Young Nails' "Hyper white" is in the same type of little jar as all their other gels.
POW is just a very thin gel that is very white, so you can put it on like polish. I do the whole nail like I was just doing a clear or pink gel overlay; then I use the POW to brush on the white tip. Then I use a regular acrylic sculpting brush with a very good point at the tip dipped in just a little bit of acetone to clean up the smile line. Then cure.
The POW is not as thick as white sculpting gels, so once it is swiped with the clean-up brush, it stays in place longer. So I can get it cured before it starts to level out and make my smile line look fuzzy.
There are some very good message boards available where you can network with other nail techs about this type of question too. I spend a lot of time at http://www.beautytech.com but there is also the The Salon Geek (http://salongeek.com I think) which is based in the UK so there are many more European nail techs on that board.
