Manicure Mania

I decided to treat myself to a manicure today since I had the afternoon off. Solar Nails was the sponsor of my painted fingernails. The prime reasoning behind my mani was my parched and cracking cuticles crying (tears of blood) for some help.

Solar Nails is located right in town inside of Prospector, so it was the most logical place to go coming straight from school. They are also walk-in, so the fact that I didn't have enough pre-planning time for the occasion wasn't a problem. They sat me down right away and a middle-aged Asian (from Vietnam, he told me specifically) clopped down a small China bowl with bubble-sudded water in front of me, and motioned for me to soak my hands. I slipped my hands into the lukewarm water, which could have preferably been a few degrees hotter. It took more than enjoyably long for the man to come back, but once he did he ripped my hands from the bowl and started going to town on my unfortunate winter-worn fingers. Clipping and filling and moisturizing my much-needed-of-it hands. 

First he took off the chipped forest-green polish that was previously on my fingers. I decided to go with a gel nail polish this time, because it lasts longer (and I was not planning on coming back any time soon). The man handed me some color wheels to choose which color polish I wanted, each color polish that they had was painted on an acrylic nail, about twenty of them all attached to a center wheel. They were pretty tacky and gross to touch. I finalized on black. After I picked the color he began to tackle the nightmare of my dry skin and cuticles, cutting away at my chapped fingers and hands then massaging lotion into them. He filed and buffed my nails and did little touches of this-and-that here-and-there. At this point the whole process was starting to become pretty tedious, having already been there for about half-an-hour. After this he started to actually paint my nails. The thing about getting gel polish is that after every single coat you have to stick your hand under a UV light for a minute; the whole process ends up resulting to at least twenty to thirty more minutes, driving the last of my patience off a cliff.

What I Payed For

When the guy was finally done with my manicure I was more than happy to whip out my wallet and happier than I should have been to pay the overpriced bill, but I was just ready to get the jeepers out of there. I'm definitely the type of person that wants something done right the first time, and I usually don't mind if it takes a little bit more time to do so, but in this case the hour and a half that I was there was about forty-five minutes past my typical leisure time limit.

My experience was mediocre and consumed WAY too much of my time, but to look at the bright side, my nails are 100% more presentable and should stay that way for "up to 2-weeks" thanks to my gel manicure.