Has anyone stopped getting gellux/ shellac and started doing their own nails?

[sortingmyselfoutslowly]

My nail lady is busy this week so I soaked off my gellux with a home acetone kit and painted my nails with Autograph polish and a gel top coat. I'll be interested to see how long it lasts. They actually look quite good... I think nail polish quality has improved recently!

I always do my own and people often ask me if they are gels. I think the brand of colour polish you use is less important than having a proper base and top coat and also neat cuticles and no flaky bits on your nails whatsoever. If you have flakies then when you wash your hands moisture will get under it and it'll be game over for your nail polish, no matter what you use.

So: perfect hands, base coat (Orly bonder is really good, I'm using a perfectly fine Barry M one at the moment though), three or even four thin coats of colour (I really like & Other Stories range), top coat (Seche Vite or Sally Hansen red bottle). If I do all this right I get 5-7 days. Usually bored of colour by then anyway. Seche Vite for a top coat probably looks the most gel-like, although it can have a tendency to make your entire polish come off in sheets on about day 4, if your nails weren't tip top before that. Looks perfect until then though!

Boots do a fantastic pot that removes gel nails without using foils, it's an acetone dip pot - I bought two so can do two nails at a time, they're much more effective than foils. Just make sure to buff your top-coat first

My nails are oily and nail polish, even professionally applied would lift and chip in less than a day.
I much prefer short nails and used Red Carpet Manicure for years. Took a bit of practice and it took maybe an hour to do once I knew what I was doing but I could get nail polish to last 10 days looking perfect! If it started to look tatty, I'd paint a normal (darker) polush over the top and get a few more days from it. I know 10 days isn't much but it was for me!
I don't wear polish at all now. I just buff. But I'd recommend the Red Carpet kit.

If you decide to do your own tips, have a look on youtube as I'm sure there will be lots of videos telling you the best way to find the right tip width and shape for you and where to place them on your nail.

I've had tips twice. The first time was amazing, she used a natural coloured tip (not white) and they fitted perfectly.

The second time was awful. She used white tips (which I don't like but I know it's a personal taste thing) and put them too far down my nail and they were too wide.

Putting the polish and using the lamp is easy. They last a good while but getting it off is the pain. Soaking or wrapping with foil just wouldn't get the gels off my nails so I've had to wait for them to chip or try to buff them off and now my natural nails are awful. They bend and split all the time and flake so badly it'll take months to get back into the condition they once were. It's just not worth it.