It’s been a while since I did my last nail blog post but the one that seems to be the most popular so far was my “how to do a gel-overlay on your nails” and so I thought what better way to second this with my “how to do an infill on your gel nails” blog post.
You might not have seen my other nail posts, so here are some facts about my gel nails. I do my nails myself. They are all my real nails with a coating of gel on top. I usually go for a natural look and if I feel like it, I will add a regular nail polish on top or do an accent nail with gel. Also, I have to address that I am not a professional. This is just how I do it at home and what works best for me. So without further or do, let’s get right into it. Oh and recently I also got into gel nail art, so you might be seeing more of gen nail art on here too.
Preparing the gel nails for the infill
As you can see in the picture below, these are my nails 2 weeks old after my last infill. They have grown quite a bit, I usually leave them until week three but I got some new nail goodies and wanted to try them out. The part just above my cuticle, which is a bit darker is my outgrown nail.
The first step is to file the nail. Starting with a corse file (180) you remove all the shine from the gel. You can use an electric nail file if you want to. I usually start off with the electric nail file and then move on to my hand file one. Make sure you only file the gel and not your natural nail. You don’t have to remove all the product just the
Shaping the nail. As you removed the topcoat and some of the gel, you move on to a softer file. Gently go over your natural nail to remove the shine and remove any product (gel) that is lifting. The lifting often occurs right at the bottom of the nail where the gel meets the new natural nail. I can’t show you how it looks here as I didn’t have any lifting. When I go over my nail with the soft file, I usually make sure that there is a seemingness transition from natural nail to gel. And I will make sure, that I have a nice C curve. Often I shorten my nails too in this process, as I just wanna keep the length but don’t want it to be any longer. If you’re just starting out, you might not wanna shorten the nails at all and that’s fine too.
Cuticle work. Push back your cuticles and remove any dead skin from the nails with a cuticle pusher. This part is very important to prevent future lifting!
Cleaning your nails. Last step is to clean off all the dust etc. Take some acetone and clean your nails with a cotton pad. I often also run them unter the water with some soap and a brush. Then I take the acetone again and do a last whipe over the nails to remove any oils.
The infill for your gel nails
Now that we have prepped the nails, it’s time for the infill. Take your dehydrator and apply it on your natural part of your nail. Then do the same with the primer. This will help with the bonding of your gel to the natural nail.
Doing the infill with gel. Take your gel. Depending on your gel system you have to apply a base gel first and then a builder gel. I can put my builder gel straight on my natural nail. This time I went with a nude builder gel. Starting at the cuticle area I place my gel carefully on the nail. Then I drag it up to the tip of my nail. Once the whole nail is covered I go in with some more gel. I place it in the middle of my nail and let it float. This will give a nice curve to the nail and help with the structure as you wanna enforce the stress point of your nail extra.
Do this to all of your other three or four nails. I am doing the thumb separately as it wouldn’t fit in my LED Lamp. Once you
Once cured take them out of the lamp and wipe over them with some acetone to remove the sticky layer. Have a close look at them. Are there any bumps you wanna remove or do you wanna neaten up the shape? Just take your file and go over them gently. As you can see from the pictures below, I was quite happy with how they turned out and didn’t need to do anything. I love a natural-looking nail, not too thick but still a good C Curve.
All that’s left to do is go over it with a gel
A fresh set of gel nails
Violà, you have a fresh set of gel nails. I know I showed you how to do an infill on your natural nails but you could do this too with nail extensions on. I love doing a gel overlay on my natural nails cause it strengthens them and I hardly get any breaks any more. The most important thing is prepping your nails correctly. Make sure there is no lifting of the gel, your cuticles are clean and any dead skin is removed. Once this is good, you can start with the gel application and everything will run smoothly. If you want a more in-depth nail tutorial on how to do a gel overlay on your natural nails, click here.
I get all my products from a swiss website. The products I used are:
- dehydrator and primer
- builder gel and topcoat
- nail file
- brush (the middle one of the set)
I hope you enjoyed this tutorial on how to an infill for your gel nails and it was helpful. Don’t forget to see what’s going on on my other social media.
Have a great one, Lea