How to Remove Gel Nails, Even If You Have No Experience
Removing gel nails can be hard and seem impossible. Although I suggest always having an experienced nails manicure technician do this stuff for you, if you're really into getting them removed yourself, read this simple procedure and you'll be removing it from your fingers in no time.
Place
Make sure you are in a very well ventilated area. The best places being outdoors or beside an open window. The mixture of nail polish remover and gel nails creates a stronger odor than nail polish itself, and smelling it for hours inside your room or house is just plain intoxicating.
Remove Nail Polish
This is an often skipped and forgotten step that comes back to frustrate women. Removing nail polish from the nails seems unnecessary since you're already going to remove the gel nails. However, removing the nail polish before removing the gel nails saves you the frustration from having to remove spots, residual or partially dissolved nail polish on your fingers after removing them. And believe me, this simple additional step will save you a lot of time and frustration later on. So to remove the nail polish have a bunch of cotton balls ready. Get one and use polish remover to remove the nail polish off of the gel nails.
Soaking your hands
After removing the polish, pour about half an inch of polish remover into a bowl. For better results you can heat the nail polish a little to make it warmer and also use a stronger acetone nail polish remover available in many drug stores. Place your whole fingers tips in the liquid so that the whole gel nails is completely submerged. Do this only one hand at a time. You always want a clean free hand to work on the other instead of two wet and messy hands. After a few minutes if the liquid solution has cooled down a bit, add some more warm acetone.
Five minutes later, if the gel nails have developed a strong odor and is now a little soft and sticky you can try gently pulling the ends of the gel nails to remove it from your real nail. You may also use an orange stick to gently pry the tips from your nail beds. If you feel any sort of pain or if the nails simply won't budge stop and continue to soak your finger tips in the liquid mixture. Remember to not force anything as this might damage your real nails. Continue to repeat this tug and soak process until you can comfortably remove all the gel from your finger tips.
After removal of gel nails
With a clean cotton ball and some clean nail polish remover fresh from a bottle, quickly wipe off the remaining sludge or goo on your fingers. Don't be alarmed if your natural nails are a little rough, you can smooth them out by gently buffing them with a nail buffer or the softer side of a nail file. You can now repeat the whole process with the other hand.
Finishing touches
So your fingers nails are now free of gel nails. At this time, your natural nails are very delicate and have been weakened by the gel nails. It will take some time before it becomes fully healthy so you have to be extra delicate with them from now on. Some suggestions on what to do now is you could shape your nails with an emery board or continue using the nail file and apply a clear coat of polish on your nails.
