As you may remember at the beginning of February, I became very adventurous with my nails. Having never been allowed to wear nail polish in my two years of previous employment, I wanted to go all out. I loved my Stiletto Nails and you can check out my post about them here, but I will never venture into the world of acrylic nails again. Wanna know why?

Now beside the fact that I love my natural nails, there is absolutely nothing wrong with acrylics if you’re willing to spend the money and time to keep them up. Not something I’m willing to do. I may seem high maintenance, but if I can’t do it myself at home then it’s not getting done. So after a few weeks of enjoying my acrylics, and with job interviews coming up, I decided it was time to soak them off and have my natural nails back. Acrylic nail removal isn’t easy, I know. But there are good ways to do so and bad ways. The good will leave your nails underneath a little brittle, and in need of a little love. The bad way will leave you with nails I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemy……and this is what I ended up with.

My own fault. I should have known not to walk into a random nail salon close to home. Unfortunately nails salons are extremely hit or miss. They started with a acetone soak, which by itself is the proper way to remove acrylics. After about 10 minutes of soaking, the woman helping me started to scrape and peel….the bad way. She even took another acrylic nail out of her kit and used it to dig under and detach the remaining bits of my acrylics. It hurt. She then took the power filer and filed down the tops of my nails until there was literally only one layer left. When I returned home, with thin and raw nails, I did everything I could to try to strengthen them. To no avail. They bent in the most painful ways. They broke. They bled underneath. They HURT. And this went on for weeks.

Now, a month and a half later, I’m still waiting for my new nails to grow in. Halfway down my nail bed the new layer can be seen growing. I’ve been trying to paint my nails and enjoy the spring colours, yet there is a noticeable ridge in the middle of each nail.  I’ve had to keep them extremely short to prevent further breaking and bending and to be comfortable, and I’ve been moisturizing my cuticles daily with my Nails Inc Vitamin E Cuticle Oil Pen (review coming soon). I can’t wait to have my nails back and I will NEVER venture into acrylics again. What are your thoughts on acrylic nails?