- [Destinee] This is a whole hot mess right now.
- Oh girl, why?
(man sighing) Her acrylic is very watery.
(upbeat music)
- Hey y'all what's up, I'm Destinee.
Staying at home has forced me to become my own beautician.
I've learned how to do these braids.
I've learned how to do strip lashes.
I am now at the point where I can longer look like this.
(upbeat music)
I'm going to do my own full set of acrylics
without any guidance.
I don't even know if I have all the tools.
No matter what happens,
my nails will be done.
The world could end and my nails will be done.
We gotta go.
We're getting length, darling.
We're getting length.
- Hi my name's Anthony,
I'm a nail artist and I'm going to be reacting to Destinee
doing her nails for the first time.
So before I ever decided to get into nails
I was actually in the military for six years.
It's very structured.
I decided to get out because I wanted to change
my creative appearance.
So I found my journey
to becoming a nail tech through school.
I always wanted to get my license.
So if you decide to take the school route,
it's gonna take relatively five months.
That's why I'm interested to see Destinee
create her own nails without any experience.
- I'm gonna have somebody like rip apart this tutorial
and I obviously don't know what I'm doing.
So I just cut my nails down and I filed them even.
- She has really good nail beds.
Probably because she's let her nails grow now
and she hasn't got nails done in a while.
- [Destinee] I just went back over and cleaned off my nails.
- If you do have polish on
you always remove the polish first.
You cut the nails and then you do file them down.
If they want their nails shorter.
So far she's doing pretty good.
Just gonna wait until she gets to the acrylic part.
- [Destinee] The next step was to figure out
what sized nail tips I need.
This honestly was the hardest part for me.
I don't really know what they're looking for.
Like this thumb I think is probably the right size.
This index finger I can tell you definitely was not.
- When we size nail tips to our clients,
we always look for the nail tip
where it doesn't dig into the side of your skin.
So us nail techs don't put the nail tips
back into the nail tip case when we're sizing our clients
because it contaminates our other nail tips.
And we don't want that.
- [Destinee] So the next step was to glue down the tips.
I realized very shortly after
that this was way too much glue
because the nail was slipping
and sliding literally everywhere.
And it took forever to get this first nail down.
But pretty much after I had this left hand done,
the right hand was really easy even though
I'm right dominant.
Adding more glue 'cause who ever said
more glue is not right?
- Okay so she did put a lot of glue on.
(Anthony laughs)
If you put too much glue
it's not gonna stick very well.
One thing that she didn't do was prep her nail.
Before you even glue your nail tip on
you wanna prep the nail.
So you wanna buff it out and get the shine off
that way your nail tip lasts way longer.
- [Destinee] And then the next step was to file the nails
so it would blend.
Come to find out later I didn't actually
blend it all the way right I don't think.
But I thought I did something.
I actually didn't have one of those like nail tip clips
so I just used these scissors
and I will file making sure they're like even
and matched up.
Now to the fun part that we've all been waiting on.
- So actually I'm gonna pause it right now
because I noticed that she missed a step.
And she forgot to prime her nail.
What primer does,
it actually helps the acrylic stick to your natural nail
that way your nails last longer.
And she did not do that.
- [Destinee] I didn't know how much or how little
to actually apply and so I just globbed the product on.
- Oh girl, why?
The reason why her acrylic is very very watery and gooey
is because she has too much liquid on her brush.
Then it's gonna flood your cuticles
and it's just gonna make a big mess.
I'm surprised.
I wanna see the end of this because (laughs).
- [Destinee] So of course what you do to the left
you must do to the right.
So here's me doing the other side of my hand.
Again it was just literally all over the place.
Shaping it, getting the right amount of powder,
I think I used more products on the paper towel
than I actually used on my nail.
- You never wanna get your paper towel to look that messy.
It damages your brush and then all that acrylic
just stays in your brush.
- [Destinee] This is a whole hot mess right now.
Now's the time where we're like,
get heavy into this filing.
- So this is something similar that she had.
This is a 150 by 150 coarse grit.
So the more coarse you use for acrylic nails
the less coarse you wanna use for your natural nails.
- It's all over the place but I mean I think they pass,
right?
Like until you get real close up on it
then that's a different conversation.
I'm gonna go wash my hands.
All right time to get to a design.
- Now she's getting into the creative heart.
Which I'm so excited for to see what she's gonna actually
do to her nails.
- I had this one style a while back
where it looked like paint running down my nails.
But instead I'm going to make it the pride rainbow colors.
So I started with my base coat and I cured it
and the next step was to use like these dotting tools
with the polish and kind of like start making
the base of what was supposed to be the drip.
It made sense in my head and it looked good in my head.
But then when I started to look at it
I was like I don't know what I'm doing
this doesn't look like the design that I had in my head.
- It's very creative, it's cute.
I love the colors that she chose.
They're very like neon pigmented.
- [Destinee] I don't think I had the right brushes
I know I for sure didn't have the right technique
but y'all, your girl tried.
When it came down to it and I had put on this last top coat.
I was not happy.
- I mean for her first time, honestly it looks really good.
It looks cute.
- [Destinee] I was over it so I was like
I'm gonna try a different design.
So I filed this off.
And went with an ombre.
I just put the polishes on like this little sponge
so they would ombre through and then I just ran them
across my nails like so.
- I knew she was going to do a rainbow look.
I knew it, I knew it.
It came out really cute.
And honestly that's a technique that I use sometimes.
Is you wanna get one of those like makeup sponges
and you wanna layer your polishes
and you can literally do the same exact look like that.
And they turned out better than I had anticipated.
I did get polish all over my fingers.
But they turned out good.
They turned out good.
After I applied all of the colors
I cured it again for the last time.
- I noticed that she cured her gel before cleaning
around her cuticles.
In order to clean that you would just get like a
any brush with acetone and you just wanna clean that up.
Gel polish doesn't dry until you cure it under the light.
So I don't know how she took that off
but I'm pretty sure it wasn't easy.
- [Destinee] What is pride without a bit of sparkle?
So to top it off I added like this sparkly coat,
that I felt really brought some texture and fun.
- That's really cute.
I love the glitter.
- [Destinee] And here is the design.
But the nails itself like when you get real close up on it
it's like girl you definitely did this by yourself
and you had no kind of help whatsoever.
This is truly my first time ever doing it
so I think in passing it works.
(upbeat music)
- I like that style.
The glitter that she put on
actually like brought it out even more.
If I had to rate her nails from a scale of one to 10
I would have to give her a six.
Her creativity was on point.
Her overall application on putting the acrylics
she didn't do too well.
It came out lumpy.
She overflood her cuticles.
Probably caused a lot of filing to do
and then her nails are eventually going to start lifting.
But for her first time not even having a tutorial
in front of her, she did pretty good.
I love doing what I do.
And I love making people feel good about themselves.
For all my males out there,
if you ever thought about becoming a nail tech go for it.
There's not enough males in this industry.
We gotta represent.
At the end of the day you gotta do what makes you happy.
(upbeat music)