

I can still click them together like Dolly Parton, which is one of the main joys of fake nails." " feel a little bit more like a natural nail, because they’re not as thick, but they’re just as hard. "The acrylics I had were a little bit bulkier, and the process of putting them on seemed a little bit messier than gels," she told me. Don’t let them literally dip your nails into a jar of powder - that means they’re using that same powder on multiple people, which is unsanitary.) And if they paint your nail and then sprinkle powder on, it’s dip. If they mix liquid and powder and mush it on, it’s acrylics. Don’t be like me! If they paint your nail with thick goo out of a pot and then stick your hands under UV, it’s gel. (I experienced this the first time I got acrylics, after walking into a random cheap salon and asking for gel nails without knowing what I was talking about. If your nail tech can't tell you exactly what the product is called, if it comes out of a labelled mystery pot, or insist it's gel even though it's powder, you're probably sitting in the wrong chair," Robyn Schwartz, a nail technician and Akzentz Certified Educator, told me. "Acrylic is liquid and powder, gel is gel. Like any product in our great capitalist experiment, nail extensions can be the subject of misleading marketing, customer misinformation, and even outright fraud. If not put on correctly, they can also be uncomfortably thick. But a major drawback is the horrible smell liquid and powder systems usually give off during application. Acrylics are also widely available and tend to be less expensive than gel. That’s a selling point if there’s a possibility you’ll want to take the nails off yourself. You can’t get them off unless somebody files them off."Īcrylics, being more porous, are both more likely to stain and easier to soak off in acetone, because both dye and remover can get in between the molecules of the plastic. "The downside for me is they don’t soak off. "Gels have a harder, non-porous surface, so they’re less likely to stain - like if you work with hair color," Alisha Rimando, executive vice president and creative director of Artistic Nail Design, told me. For added length, the products are applied either over a tip - a long piece of plastic glued to the end of your nail - or over a form, a little sticker under your natural nail that guides the extension and peels off once the nail is hard.Įach of the systems have benefits and drawbacks.

Photo: Cat FergusonĮxtensions, aka the artificially long nails you might think of when you hear "acrylics," are not part of every dip or gel manicure. OPI, for instance, originally stood for Odontorium Products Inc.) Many major nail product companies started in dental products before branching out to cosmetics.
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(All of these systems grew out of dental technology, used for bridges and crowns. Dip nails are created by brushing the nail with glue, sprinkling on the same powder used in liquid and powder systems, and then adding an activator, sparking a chain reaction between the acrylic and the glue to create a hard, smooth surface. Gel nails are painted on from a little pot of gloop and then cured under a UV light - the same basic technology as "soft" polish gels, but resulting in a harder nail. The term "acrylic nail" usually refers to liquid and powder mixes, which are combined in front of you into a blob of dough, shaped onto your nail with a brush, and then air dried. There are three basic types of fake nails, all of them from the acrylic family of plastics. To me, they’re miracles of chemistry - and the way I completely, totally trashed my nails. Fake nails: Depending who you ask, they’re either works of art, an absolute necessity, tacky nonsense, or a special-occasion treat.
