Perfectly Polished: My First Time Trying CND’s Shellac

11 Jan Perfectly Polished: My First Time Trying CND’s Shellac

I had my very first experience with CND Shellac last week. I met up with my giiiiiiiiiirlfriends in the city for Christmas in January and mani/pedis. You should know up front that unless I trust the manicurist to do a good job, I prefer to do my own. Pedis are a different story but my nails? I do a really good job myself so I hate when I pay and it isn’t up to par. Let me tell you how anal I can get: I prep my nails before I get there. Cut them to the length that I want, make sure that my cuticles are half way decent. I didn’t do that this time around and I kind of wish I did. My cuticles were practically ignored and she didn’t make sure my nails were all the same length.

I’m really bad about speaking up about things like that. Do you guys speak up when you in the hairdressers or manicurist chair and don’t like what’s happening?

So on to the good stuff, I was really excited to try the shellac. I’m no stranger to gel manis, I’ve been doing them on myself for some time now whether with the Red Carpet kit, just using a gel topcoat over a regular mani or my new favorite Sally Hansen gel strips. This was basically the same thing and I did check with homegirl to make sure that the dryer my nails were cured in was LED, no skin cancer scares for me, please.

Truth time? I’m loving this black jelly mani. I’ve cut them down and cleaned up my cuticles. Best part? It’s been a week and no chips. Even with me cutting, reshaping and trimming (bad, I know, but I love how they look) my cuticles, you can’t tell. I really like them.

I’m itching to take them off though. I have to decided between Sally Hansen Insta-Gel Strips, the polka dot ones or Essie’s new gel strips. I’m not going to lie, I screamed a little in Walgreens when I saw those, LOL.

What’s on your nails?