DIY Shellac Nails ♥

Last March I was given a shellac UV lamp and Blue Sky Polish as a birthday gift from work colleagues as they know how much I love shellac nails, and I'm ashamed to say I have only recently used it! For reasons unbeknown I kept putting this off and now I wish I had got on with it sooner, as it's so easy and would have saved me a lot of money!

You can buy these UV lamps cheaply off ebay or Amazon. You can either buy the branded CND Shellac polishes, or a cheaper knock-off version called Blue Sky. Blue Sky seems to do all the colours that CND do for a fraction of the price. But if you want the polish to be extra long lasting I'd advise the proper CND stuff.

Instructions

- Soak nails in warm water for about 5 minutes and dab dry

- Push cuticles back and remove any dead skin

- Use a nail buffer to create a smooth surface

- File nails to desired shape 

- Paint Shellac base coat on and cure under lamp for 10 seconds

- Apply first coat of colour and cure under lamp for 2 mins

- Repeat with second coat

- Apply top coat and cure under lamp for 2 mins

- Sweep alcohol wipe over nails to get rid of stickiness and to create shine (or use alcohol hand gel if you don't have wipes like I did!)

Here's the final result! I did this for Christmas and wanted to make them a bit more festive so added a coat of normal Barry M gold glitter polish on my ring finger! I found the whole process really easy, and I'll definitely be doing my own next time instead of paying £25 for someone else to do it!

One thing that was a bit tricky was that if the polish bleeds on to your cuticle or skin, it does start to peel off more quickly than the polish not touching any skin! I will watch out for that next time I use the machine. I would say that in my experience the CND Shellac from the salon lasts much longer and mine started to chip earlier than normal, but still lasted about 2 weeks! But they survived a lot of plate washing at Christmas!

To remove I soaked cotton wool with acetone nail varnish remover, placed on nails, wrapped in tin foil and waited for 10 mins, and the polish came off really easily.

I would definitely recommend this to any shellac lovers out there. If you've got the dosh then I'd recommend CND, but if not Blue Sky is an affordable option!

Have you ever had Shellac nails?

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