Why are gels so popular in the UK vs. the US??

[Runnergal]

I am not a nail technician- I posted here a few months ago about technique...I had a beautiful looking set of nails done, but the tech used a lot of monomer, my fingers were wet with it. I came here to ask if that was kosher (I was pretty sure it was not), and you pros confirmed my suspicion. I asked her not to use so much, she got huffy and so I never went back.

Through sheer luck, I have found a wonderful tech who does a beautiful job with gels (I prefer them, for some reason they never, ever lift), but even the high end places here almost exclusively do liquid and powder with gel only as a finishing topcoat. I called Creative for a reference, but there was no one within 40 miles of me. I spent months stalking people with nice nails, but 99% of the time, though they assured me they were gels, they were in fact l &p with gel on top.

Anyway, I was wondering why it is so hard to find techs here (I live in Northern California) who do gels. They seem to be very popular in Europe and the UK. So that is my long winded question, and many thanks for the advice on my previous query.

 

[slhallford]

I'm in Northern California, I will pm you.

S

 

[Ms.Matrix]

YAAAAAY geeks helping geeks!!! I love it! :lol:

 

[Gina Silvestro]

I think it's mainly due to lack of product knowlege and training. Most nail techs don't know how to do gels and the schools seem to concentrate on liquid and powder acrylics.

Times are changing though, and gels are becoming more and more popular here in the USA.

 

[beautynails]

I think it's mainly due to lack of product knowlege and training. Most nail techs don't know how to do gels and the schools seem to concentrate on liquid and powder acrylics.

Times are changing though, and gels are becoming more and more popular here in the USA.

I think we have the same problem here in AUstralia. There is very little training available with gel so nail techs are doing it without the training. Of course then that leads to people not liking gel and thinking it's weak, when really they've just never had it done properly.

 

[slhallford]

I think it's mainly due to lack of product knowlege and training. Most nail techs don't know how to do gels and the schools seem to concentrate on liquid and powder acrylics.

I think you're bang on about it, Gina. I know that when I was in school, we had a chapter in our textbook on gels and that was it. No hands on, nada. Interestingly, I just had a request from a local school to give their students a demo on how they work. I think times are changing.

S

 

[Ms.Matrix]

I think you're bang on about it, Gina. I know that when I was in school, we had a chapter in our textbook on gels and that was it. No hands on, nada. Interestingly, I just had a request from a local school to give their students a demo on how they work. I think times are changing.

S

Yup that's all we had in our book...it may not have even been a whole chapter! :lol:

 

[mdskora]

I think this is true also.. we had very little training on gel... But i ended up buying and IBD prof kit and that came with quite a good demo dvd.. I watched it over and over.. I did my first set of gels on my own nails and I just kept watching it for every finger until it was stuck in my head. Still can;t get as good a shape as with L & P.. but alot of people still prefer acrylic here in Australia...

 

[Jeni Giles]

Gel isn't my personal favorite, nor is it my best technique, but my students are stuck learning Gel. We still have a hard time with brittleness with Gel, even from Brisa and clients who are religious about oiling. The gel enhancements seem more prone to shattering and cracking especially mid winter and mid summer; our most extreme weather times of the year. Mid winter it's well below 0 farenheit, mid summer it's into the 90's farenheit and usually sunny. Lower elevations near us that have less extreme temperatures seem to do all right with gel. The technicians using gel most likely graduated from our school.

 

[Peter Pan]

aint read all the thread, but from the title all i can say is - ive no idea - the gel techs in my area use file off - where is the kindness in that - there aint one - unless you trained on HOW to remove- and most techs in my area are not trained to the standard they SHOULD BE for this service - i reckon there is probs only a handfull of us in my area that are actually trained to the required standards, but there again, im guessing

 

[angel fingers]

i think there are more gel techs in the u.k because we draw our influences from the nail world from both the usa and europe.
in the usa the majority are using liquid and powder but in europe the majority are using gel.
us being in the middle here in the u.k we are largely led by u.s trends but still heavily influenced by what is going on in europe. giving us a slightly more even balance of both the systems.
i would guess that in the usa the gel trend will spread as time goes on . we live in such a global market now that things will inevitably balance out eventually.