How to Apply Acrylic Nails

Series Summary

The beauty ritual of manicuring fingernails began over 5,000 years ago and continues today with even more popularity. Caring for nails is an important part of health and hygiene and should be practiced by everyone. One can care for their own nails or hire an esthetician or beautician to do basic care and beautification. In this free video series on nail care, an experienced nail technician discusses proper ways to care for nails. First, she explains how to apply acrylic nails, apply a flawless coat of dark nail polish, determine acceptable nail length and file nails properly. Next, learn about fixing chipped nail polish, growing long fingernails, choosing the right nail polish color to match a skin tone and making acrylic nails last longer. Finally, she talks about manicuring short nails, removing acrylic nails and whitening yellow fingernails.

Video Transcript

"Today we are going to demonstrate for you how to apply an acrylic nail. My name is Shell George and I'm at Margo's of Northville Michigan. Were going to start by choosing a nail and just go on ahead and prepping the nail by pushing the cuticle back. Whenever applying any type of artificial application you want to make sure there is no skin on the nail plate that is going to interfere with the adhesion of your product. Once you've pushed that back successfully you're going to just go ahead and buff the nail lightly. Just to etch the surface and make sure that there is no real smooth, shiny spot for that nail to not apply properly.The next thing that is going to happen is your going to want to go in and check for any kind of skin that's loose. Remove it so that it does not become a part of the product application. The next item on your list is going to be that you are going to add an extension if you wish. In this case I think today what we are going to do is do a simple overlay. If you were to a add an application like a plastic nail tip or a piece of fiber to extend the length of the nail. Then you would just glue that on and minimize the edge where that is secured to the nail. After prepping the nail. You want to make sure that it's clean. So, we are going to spray the nail with a thymol wash type solution by Hybrid nails. Once this application dries, the nail is going to be clean. There's not going to be any germ or bacteria available to the nail that your going to seal in. So you are going to feel safe about applying your product. You just going to brush on some bonder lightly. Being careful not to put that bonder on the cuticle of the nail or on the sidewall of the nail. Once that's applied and it's wet you are going to go ahead and apply a little bit of powder. You can sprinkle it across the nail about evenly. Tap off the excess. Make sure you don't have any on the skin. If you did you could use a birchwood stick or an orangewood stick and just lightly go around the cuticle to make sure that skin is not part of the application once again. You are going to then take your brush-on bonder. Go right over that product. Smooth it down and make sure that it's secure. Nice without any bumps. Use what's called a spray activator from Hybrid nails. You will want to just hold that about six inches away from the nail. Once you have sprayed it gently, you can just go ahead and wait about thirty seconds and it will dry. You can test it before you buff it by touching it lightly. This one is not ready. If you feel as if it's not drying fast enough you can always go back. Apply another little bit of applicator activator to that nail. Again test it to see if it's dry. Now, it looks like were in business. Now, what we are going to do is just go right over the nail with that soft fine grit buffer. Just to make sure everything is smooth. At this point if your brand new at applying this type of product you may have to take a file. You may have to just check around the sides of the nail. You might have a bump. The best way to do this from an experts point of view is to look at the nail from the tip of the nail down towards the cuticle area. If you look at the nail from the tip down you are going to see any imperfections, any bumps or lumps sticking up. At that point in time you will take the soft side of the file and you will go ahead and file those down and then rebuff with a fine fine grit buffer. In our case we didn't have any of those problems. So, we are just going to go ahead now and proceed with the next step. Which is sealing the nail. Today, I've chosen to use a soft pink colored sealer because we may just wear this nail natural. That will give it a really nice look. So we are going to go ahead and seal that nail with that clear pink soft gel. It's a self leveling gel. So, once you brush it on you can just kind of look and make sure it's done it's job and self leveled. Then, you are going to to go ahead and again add that activator that was used in the first step of the application. This one takes a little bit longer to set up. So, it might take about a minute to one minute and a half. Your going to just have to wait for that to set up. Once that portion of the application is setup you again will just make sure by looking from the tip down if you have any imperfections that need to be rectified. If they do you just buff them or lightly take a file and remove any kind of bumps or humps in the nail. Once that's finished you can either shine it up by buffing to a nice shiny finish or using like a three way buffer or if it's already in perfect condition when it does setup as this one looks to be. You just leave it be as it is and it will be fine. There you have a acrylic nail."