How to bring your nails back from the dead

You peeled off the gel, didn't you?

by Claire

I decided recently that I was going to stop getting my nails done. For the last year or so, I have been going to the nail salon roughly once a month to get acrylic nails and a shellac manicure. The local place I go to is a dream: it’s not them, it’s me. But I can’t keep this up anymore.

The main thing I have to accept is that it’s too expensive. I pay £40 to get them put on, then £30 every time they are filled in and repainted with gel polish, plus I tip £5 every time. If I go once a month, we’re looking at £500 a year on nails. My inner dialogue with self about money is like when Martin Bashir goes baroque urn shopping with Michael Jackson in Las Vegas. I think Michael is my Id and Martin is my Superego? Give it a watch if you haven’t seen it recently, it is insane.

The other problem I have is that my nails look great when they are just done but not great after about ten days - so half the time I’m not happy with them and am waiting to get them re done. To be clear, I don’t want long, coffin-shaped, nail-art-bedazzled claws: I literally just want my nails to look really neat and pretty. Like this:

And this is how they look when they have just been done, but with the vibe of a sad two week old bikini wax, by week two to three they look like this:

At this point they need to be either taken off or filled in with more acrylic, which takes about an hour. Now that I have TWO small bleating children, negotiating this time is proving much more challenging. I feel so frustrated just sitting there staring into space when I could be doing something else. In short, what used to feel like an indulgent treat now feels like another boring thing on my to do list. It is madness and has to stop.