Like all the cool girlies last year, I started doing my own nails after coming across TikTok videos of “Gel X” nails. If you don’t know what that is, it’s when you use a gel nail glue with clear full coverage tips and cure them with a UV light. I became absolutely OBSESSED!
I hated spending time going to nail appointments. I would go every two weeks and usually came out disappointed. I almost never walked out with the design I wanted, they took forever, and every year it became more and more money. So when I saw how easy it was to do my own nails, I went all in. I took my little butt over to Amazon and purchased everything I needed. A kit with the UV light, a set of full coverage clear nail tips, gel colors, and a drill.
The reality is that it took longer than just going to the salon, but I was having fun. I actually became quite good at nail art and even started doing it for family. However, when I tell you I became obsessed, I mean it. I wanted to practice. I would see new designs on Pinterest and instantly need to work on them, even if it meant taking off nails that had only been on for a day or two. That’s how bad it got, I was doing my nails every 2-3 days.
That’s when the reactions started. It was a slow start so it took me a while to realize what was happening, and even longer to realize what it was.
One day, I did my nails late at night and I started noticing little oozing bubbles around two of my cuticles. My initial thought was that I got a cut infected after cutting my cuticles to far. I removed those nails and let my fingers heal for a few days. The next time I applied the nails, the same thing happened only on a few more fingers. This time there was no cut. I repeated the process a few more times, taking a break from the nails a few days at a time but the same thing kept happening so I decided to give my nails a full month to fully heal.
Well after a month, I decided to just give myself a gel manicure and pedicure. No fancy long nails. No crazy designs. Just a solid color gel polish. That’s when things hit the fan. Within a few hours, my fingers were unbearably itchy. They were red and swollen to the point where I woke myself up in the middle of the night scratching myself, going as far as using a hairbrush to find any relief. There was none! I used the drill to remove some polish and soaked off the rest and within a few hours, the swelling had gone down and the itching was minimal but still lasted about a week. During this entire time, my toes were fine. To this day, I still don’t get a reaction on my toes.
In the interest of science, I tried again a month later to the same reaction. Oozing bubbles, swelling, dryness, redness, and unbearable itchiness. I made an attempt at dip powder nails as well and got the same reaction. I tried gel designs on full coverage tips then using nail glue to apply them so that uncured gel wouldn’t touch my skin – still the same reaction, albeit less severe.
It wasn’t until I came across a video on TikTok where a woman was “stiching” a young girl that was using gel nail glue to cure press-on nails where she advise that unless a nail tip was 100% clear, uncured gel would fester and seep into your skin and in the end – a form of contact dermatitis as a reaction. It was then that I realized what had happened to me. I had been doing my nails so often and likely not letting them dry under the UV light for enough time that I had developed a pretty serious allergy to the chemicals in gel polish.
I was DEVESTATED! After spending hundreds on nail products, I couldn’t use any of them on myself again.
For a long time I felt really helpless. I spent hours scrolling online for ANY article that would tell me that this would only be a temporary thing but to no avail. All the articles said the same thing. The realization that I would never be able to do my nails with anything other than regular nail polish was a hard pill to swallow.
Well finally I went to Reddit and asked if anyone had a solution. Of course the people on Reddit are angels because one person came through with their recommendation!
CND Shellac Gel Polish. I get mine from Beyond Polish and it’s pricier than the kits on Amazon but it’s my own fault at this point so I have to eat the cost.
I tried this the polish on one finger first and left it on for over a week without any reaction before I felt comfortable putting it on every nail. Needless to say I’ve now started to accumulate the CND nail polish collection. I don’t have a solution for using gel glue to make the nails last longer but I’ve found that the KISS Powerflex nail glue works wonders and last so long if you can avoid prolonged moisture exposure.
If you are going through the same thing, I truly hope this helps!
P.S. While I wrote this post to be a warning, it is in no way meant to dissuade people from doing their own nails. There are many many people out there that have been doing nails for years and have not had this issue, but the key is to make sure you’re doing it properly!
