Overlay help please

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ClaireDix86

polishedpinkys
Joined
Dec 4, 2015
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Location
Norwich
Hi ladies Sorry if this is a silly question..
I qualified in December last year in gel and l&p extensions, mani, pedi, and gel polish. I use gellux hard gel and IBD just gel polish. My question is..
When doing an infil on an overlay of hard gel finished with a soak off polish, it's literally taking me an hour and a half to just to file off the gel polish and prep the nail. I'm using the ruby IBD file and am finding that it's just taking forever and the file seems almost blunt after one client. Has anyone got any tips as to what could speed up this process? Silly question but can you soak off the gel polish without it damaging the hard gel underneath? I've tried doing this in myself and find that it makes the hard gel soft and like you could almost peel it off I feel confident in the end result it just seems to take forever .. Any advice is muchly appreciated xx
 

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Is It one of those that needs the gloss buffing off before acetone will penetrate? I wrap each finger up to soak then literally as soon as Ive wrapped the tenth, I go to the first one I wrapped and the gel polish has usually softened enough to buff off easily, but without disturbing the acrylic or gel underneath, then one by one I go through them all.

I use CND shellac or Gellux but would have thought it would be similar. I need to buff the shine off the gellux before soaking

I do this procedure, prep, infill and re-shellac in an hour

Hope this helps x
 
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Hard gel is not technically a soak off - hence it's name 'hard gel' but if you expose it to enough acetone it will start to breakdown and go almost rubbery, it will reharden once the acetone evaporates but you have compromised the structure of the gel and the overlay so no, soaking is not really the solution.

I don't use IBD so I don't know about their abrasives, but I would imagine you can go down a grade of courseness to speed things up, after all, you are filing over gel not the natural nail so you can go quite coarse. Obviously it goes without saying go gently and whilst hard gel is harder than soak off gel it's much softer to file than L&P, so you could easily file though to the natural nail.

I would also double check your filing technique, is every stroke of the abrasive making full contact? Are you working in a methodical way, same routine for each finger. It shouldn't take that long to file off gel polish. That said you are newly qualified and speed will come with time and experience.
 
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When I started out, I thought all files were created equal. They aren't. I haven't used the one you do, but perhaps try out different brands.
 
I do soak off the gel polish first just dont over soak it on any overlay, i use pads with acetone and wrap with foils over the nail, cover the last nail and then check the first nail you have covered if gel polish is bubbled gently file complete all nails and then file the uv gel, i use nsi brand so i find this soft to file and doesnt take to long for a file ready for infill, i hope that makes sence :)
 
Thanks a lot for your advice ladies!! Xx
 

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