Nail School Recap - Week 2!

Starting a little late here, as I've been in school for two weeks now. Oh well.

School started off with a bang - first night we were doing manicures on each other. Then pedicures, then wraps & shellac, and now we're already working with acrylics. The teacher is very into pushing us right into things and challenging us. She's great and is super talented. :)

Our schedule is fairly straight forward - Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday nights we're in the salon or in theory and working on practicing things, be it on forms or each other and taking clients sporadically. Saturdays are our BIG client days and we're in the salon from open to close. Most of our clients come in for manis, pedis and shellac, but we do get quite a few acrylic/gel clients as well.

The first Saturday I did an acrylic soak off, pedi and then a shellac manicure. The morning had been slow so she was my only client, but it was still about a 3 hour process given everything that needed to be done. She was great and it was really nice. I had another client later in the week who was a shellac soak off and regular polish and oh man it was a wonder I was able to save her nails at all. People who overbuff nails make me a very sad person indeed. ;o;

This past Saturday I didn't have a client at all, even though we were fairly busy. This was due to the fact that I was being a dummy for one of the other students to try out acrylics on (and subsequently a good two hours of filing to get them to a manageable thickness - thank god I'd gotten my drill by then!). The receptionist asked us if we could do a full set of gels on a client who was getting her hair colored - the teacher and I were the only ones who could do gel so we said yes, but to have her hair colored first so I could practice with our product first.

I have only ever tried two forms of gels - the IBD hard gel system and then the Nail Bliss soak-off. Both are fairly straight forward and I knew the basics of how to work with it. BUT, every system works differently so I wanted to play before putting the Tammy Taylor gels on her.

So far, I've been fairly hit and miss with the Tammy Taylor products. I love the Prisma Colors and the regular white & clear pink acrylics, but the P3 pink is way too sticky no matter what. I really like the xtreme adhesion monomer but the no odor one that came in our kit is SHIT. Polish & top coat are fairly meh but the miracle manicure is awesome (gel top coat). Her gels? NIIIICE. Easy to work with and didn't bubble easy. Also fairly easy to clean up!

Sadly...client left without getting her gels done, which sucked because no gel set for me or tip, but I did get credit for a service for the fact that I was playing with it for a good long while and did several tips as well as a layer of the pink glitter gel over my own acrylics as a sealant.

I did get to play with the prisma colors as well and sat in the back of the salon sculpting. I haven't done 3D nail art in a while but seeing as I want to compete at the Premier Show in Orlando in June, I need to practice. In the end I managed a cute bow and a niiiice rose before we were out of time. I need to dig up my sculpting brushes to use though - the Tammy Taylor small acrylic brush was far too big for my nails with 3D art.

Next week we'll be doing a lot of theory, but we're also talking about taking a field trip to one of the nail supply stores that is only ever open during the week. XD Exciting!