Making sure you are getting Shellac and not another brand!!

To all Shellac customers - make sure you are getting www.cnd.comShellac and not another brand!

I felt I had to write this as I have now had two of my clients come to me saying they got Shellac done elsewhere but on receiving the treatment said the bottles were not Shellac even though they were advertising the service Shellac.

I will tell you about my most recent experience in my salon www.ezina.co.uk  One of my ladies who comes to me regularly for a shellac pedicure every 4-6 weeks visited me a couple of weeks ago, she ony has a pedicure as she is in the medical industry and sadly is not allowed to wear Shellac on her fingers. (I have done it on her on one occasion when she was going on holiday). So she does know all about Shellac and gets on very well with it.

Anyway the other weekend a friend of hers said her sister was practising with Shellac and would she be a model to practise on, my client said no problem she was having some time off so it would be fine to have it on her fingers. This took place on the Saturday, anyway along my client went and as this other person went through the process my client realised this was not Shellac being used, her nails were buffed to take off the shine, the UV lamp was on continuously, the colour didnt even represent any CND Shellac colour!! She didnt want to say anything, after all it was for free so she just went along with it and left it at that.

My client was then coming to me on the following Wednesday (4 days later) for her Shellac pedicure. Anyway we got chatting and she was telling me about how she was lead to believe it was Shellac treatment she was getting but realised by the look of the lamp and bottles that it wasnt but had gone along with it anyway as she felt too awkward to say anything. She showed me her fingers and she asked me if i could remove it as every finger had chipped and one had come off completely removing some of her nail plate with it and causing peeling on the nail plate. I gladly said I would remove it after her pedicure.

I finished her pedicure and consequently wrapped her nails in magis wraps and acetone (dsolve) to remove the unknown brand of Shellac copy. Well all I can say is one hour later, after having wrapped her fingers 5 times in foil and acetone I revealed her very dry, dehydrated, peeling nails. I smothered them in solar oil and cuticle eraser and gave her some CND hand cream. I said to her if she didnt know me and if she hadnt had first hand experience of the REAL shellac, how would she rate it. She said if she had only had the other treatment, (the not real thing) she would have never had it again and wouldnt have recommended it to anyone.

So here is my advice:

to all customers out there when having a shellac manicure, check all the bottles are branded "CND Shellac", secondly make sure the lamp is CND, the curing of the shellac under the lamp is very important and will determine how long it lasts, and thirdly check the salon or beauty therapist has a shellac certificate (see photo). Beauty salons/therapists are selling Shellac as a concept using other products and not as a BRAND.

People think they are getting Shellac but they are in fact NOT, they are getting a cheaper brand and then experiencing problems such as peeling and chipping giving Shellac a bad name and putting people off having it done again. To all of those who have experienced this, go to a certified salon, http://www.cnd.com/find-salon go on to the CND website, they list these and try it again, I can promise you, you will not be disappointed.