#NailTechNailedIt Weeks 5 through 7

Weeks after the first few start to blend together in Beauty School, especially with a pretty catastrophic flood breaking everything up. In total, I missed four days of class because of the flooding events, but we're back now, and slowly getting back into the swing of things.

Before the flood all began Wednesday night, I performed my first set of gel enhancements, again on my wonderful model Clare. It took forever...I think we racked up three hours. Ultimately, neither Rachel or I were very happy with the final results:

Chunksville USA!

When we returned to school almost a week later, we talked about it with Concha. She identified some of our key problems, which included placing the tips (the white parts of her nail you see there) too far down near our clients' cuticles. If you place them too far down, there's more tip that's required to adhere to the natural nail, and that leaves more room for lifting.

I also hate the way they're leaning toward being duck feet. I was forcing the tips onto her nails, even though they were too small, so they splayed out too wide and I didn't file them evenly along the side walls.

Finally, the chunky, uneven bumps you see on most of them is a major result of a) not removing the ridge between tip and natural nail and b) not removing the ridges after finishing the service.

I wanted to see how a pro did it, on a real nail, so Concha did a few of my nails. She took her time and showed us how to properly glue, and also how to size the tips. Her technique made much more sense, and I easily saw what I did wrong.

Fast forward to yesterday. I did another service (on my friend Chloe this time) keeping all of these things in mind. I'm still unsure how the longevity of the service has improved (Clare's popped off in a few days) because Chloe didn't want to keep hers. But check out how much smoother, shallower, and more even they are!

Much better! Still not perfect by any means, but much better! Check out that pinky! I'm least happy with the hand on the right's ring finger, but I know exactly why. From the beginning, I sized it to be too small, which meant I had to put it farther down her cuticle to get it to stick. So the end result is a too-big white part, and more bumps to fight with.

Smoothing it all out was also much easier, as I found my niche in a buffer. Previously, I used a buffer that was too flexible, with too strong a grit. This time, I used the flip side of a file, which gave me more control, and a finer attention to detail.

Am I totally comfortable with UV gel enhancements? No, not by any stretch. But I am excited to see progress and improvement.

Theory-wise, we didn't do anything too exciting. We spent an ungodly amount of time on two chapters (anatomy and skin diseases), which I'm sure all you Milady textbook readers can attest to loathing as much as I do. Anatomy, while interesting, is extensive to an unnecessary degree. I understand that I need to learn more about the integumentary system, but what could I possibly need to know from the excretory system?

The best part of these past weeks was Saturday, when Chloe and Shayna came in for NAIL ART! I got to spend all day dolling them up in neons for an event we were all going to later. Here's the final looks they chose (though my camera was less than cooperative in capturing the real appeal).

Chloe's are actually a neon pink and neon yellow gradient, much brighter than shown.

Shayna's are a mishmash of neon colors with black, bold lines and studs. I gained inspiration for these from ChrissyAi's look.

What do you think so far of nail tech school? We're just about half way through the class portion of it all, and just have a few more chapters to go, and a few more services to learn, including the all-exciting acrylics and waxing (elbow to fingers and knee to feet).