Nail patching... (pic spam)

Ok, so apparently my worry about not having things to post while I'm using Nailtrition was all in vain.  I'm getting all kinds of things to post about...and not anything I'm particularly fond of, though it is nice to share some tips.

What do I mean?

Well last night I got to experience the epitome of nail blogger nightmares...a tear in my nail!

I was opening a box, and my hand slipped and I felt a pull and I looked down and it was all I could do not to cry.

This is what I found:

You can see the torn corner on the upper right of my thumb nail, a perfect little square rip and it hurt like no one's business.

Now, it's taken we quite some time to get my nails where they'll grow nicely and I knew I wasn't going to be able to bring myself to cutting this nail and starting over.

So instead, I remembered an awesome tutorial I watched on Collette's (SimpleLittlePleasure's) YouTube channel for silk wraps for rips and breaks.  Seen here:

So I carefully wrapped my thumb in a bandaid to sleep so I wouldn't snag the nail, and first thing this morning I ran to Sally to pick up some supplies.  Now, I know you can use a teabag, but I didn't have any, or nail glue or any of the other things I'd need so this was just as easy of an option, and its nice to have a lot of extra silk wraps for the future.

Here's what I used (pretty much exactly what Colette used):

All except for the manicure scissors (I already had those) I bought at Sally's.  In the silk wraps, you get 40 nail shaped wraps, but for small tears you can cut smaller pieces and get much more use out of them.  I also got a bottle of gel resin and a four-sided buffer.

So following the steps in the video I proceeded to repair my nail.

Here is the application of the piece of silk patch.

After trimming the excess, applying the 1st layer of resin, and filing off the excess patch.

After second layer of resin and buffing the seams to make the nail more even.

After applying two coats of Nailtrition.

As you can see, you can barely see the patch on the nail at all.  In person there's a little bit of a visible seam, but you can't feel it when you touch it.

Hopefully the patch will stay on long enough for my nail to grow out, allowing me to file off the break over time without having the chop off the length of my nail.

Have you ever had to repair a break?  How'd it go, and what did you use?

Hugs & Kisses & Great Polishes!

~ Cat