Soft gel nail tips are a quick way to add lengths to natural nails and these soft gel full cover nail tips are attached to the natural nails by gel base coat, so they have superior adhesive strength.
Unlike the regular nail tips (half cover nail tips) used in other nail extension applications which only attach to the natural nails at the free edges, these soft-gel nail tips fully cover the entire surface of the nail beds. In other words, they are soft gel press on nails.
Soft gel nail tips come in different sizes and lengths that you can search on nail tips catalogue.
- Short or Long Coffin shape
- Short or Long Almond shape
- Short or Long Square Shape
- Medium or Long Stiletto shape
These Soft Gel nail tips are flexible so they can take on the shapes and curves of natural nails. This makes these tips adhere better. This flexibility also prevents any gaps between these tips and the nails from becoming too big so they are virtually snag-free.
Another advantage of these flexible soft tips is they are resistant to breakage.
These full cover soft gel tips also come pre-shaped so they cut down on shaping time.
How long do soft gel tip last?
Normally, since soft gel tips are put on nails using the strong adhesive bond of a gel base coat, the tips can last from 3 to 4 weeks.
How to apply soft gel nail tips?
Nail prep:
- Sanitize your hands and nails.
- Push back overgrown cuticles and remove dry cuticles on the nail with a cuticle pusher.
- Trim your nails short with a pair of nail clippers and shape them with a nail file. Smooth out the nail shape with a buffer.
- Gently remove the shine using a fine nail file or a buffer block.
- Clean away all the dust on the nail surface using your nail cleanser. Let dry.
- Apply dehydrator/pH balanced solution. Let dry.
- Now is the time to find nail tips that would fit on all ten of your nails. Make sure the tips will cover both sides of each nail. You can press a nail tip on your nail and to see if it covers both sides.
- Brush a thin coat of tip primer to the underside of these ten nails. Lay them curved up on the table so you can easily pick them up later.
- Brush the same tip primer to all 10 nails.
Applying soft gel nail tips:
- Put a very small bead of the soft tip gel adhesive on the underside of the soft gel tip where it will come into contact with your nails. Scrape your brush against the round edge. Depending on each nail, you would use more of this gel adhesive or less. Your little finger will need the least and your thumb will need the most amount.
- Attach the soft gel tip to the nail. You would start by placing the round edge of the tip next to your cuticle line so that it will be close but does not touch the cuticle.
- Lightly press down the tip starting from the cuticle to the free edge to push out the air between your nail and the tip. You will be able to tell if you have enough adhesive or not. If it is too little, add a very tiny bead. If it is too much, remove some by scraping the excess off with a clean cuticle pusher of a small spatula.
- You can do this because the adhesive will not dry or set without being exposed to UV light.
- Now you can start to press the tip down harder.
- Visually check whether the adhesive spreads uniformly on the whole nail surface.
- When you are happy with the seal, keeping pressing the nail tip down on the nail and bring it to the UV light from a tough LED light and flash cure for 5 seconds.
- Do this for all five nails and cure them with a regular UV nail lamp for 60 seconds.
- Repeat this for the nails on the other hand.
- Putting finishing touches:
- Remove all the excess adhesive on cuticles and both sides of each nail if there is any.
- Using a fine nail file lightly roughen up the nail tip surface using a buffer so the color polish or gel topcoat will stick on better.
- Clean all dust with cleanser or alcohol
- You can put on either regular or gel nail polish on these soft gel tip full sets. However, do remember that if you put gel polish on, you will have to remove this gel polish the way you normally do, be it wrapping, soaking, or using nail clips.
Content written by Nails FAQ
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