Goodbye Broken Nail - Jamberry to the Rescue!

I have a fun story to share with ya'll! No, I'm not from the south, but my Dad is, and it's such a convenient word, so I'll just go with it! ;)

Anyway, so I'm in the middle of doing a Jamberry party this week, and I've been wanting to put on some new wraps because I think they're just so fun, and I wanted to show off the pictures to my party-goers.

And I'll just start with a *disclaimer* here that I am NOT a Jamberry consultant, just a happy customer! So happy, in fact, that I *am* hosting a party this week, so the only way I'll get anything monetarily from this post is if you happen to read it during my party and order something before it ends, in which case, I may get a better hostess reward. But chances are that by the time you read this, my party will be over anyway, so I just thought I'd let you know that this is an unbiased report of my experience with the product, and a couple of issues I had, and how I solved them. It's not intended to be a sales pitch. (**UPDATE: See the June 3 update at the bottom of this post for details on my becoming a Jamberry "hobbyist" several weeks after hosting my party! **) 

Now that that's out of the way, can I just say that I LOVE Jamberry?! Normal nail polish never has worked for me very well because I tend to forget myself and chew on my fingertips. I know, I know. . . it's a bad habit, but I always end up with chipped nails within a couple of days, or hours. :P Either that, or I lose patience waiting for them to dry and end up with a sticky, gummy mess. All that, plus the fact that I am a piano player, and now a piano teacher, so shorter nails have always been the norm for me. Needless to say at this point, nail polish has not been a huge part of my life. I've mostly just done boring, short nails.

SO - when I first saw Jamberry about six weeks ago, at the beginning of April, I was super excited! I thought, "Wow! This could really work for me!" So I got a free sample in the mail from my newly-found cyber-friend, Jenn Stevenson, who is an Independent Jamberry Consultant. When the wraps came in the mail, I was so excited to try them! The sample was just one little tiny wrap, but I have short nails, so it gave me just barely enough to do my two pinky fingers and two pinky toes. haha. But it was great because it gave me an idea of how they worked and whether or not I would like them.

Here's the result of my first attempt at putting on Jamberry nail wraps:

Left pinky

Right pinky

Toe pinkies!

I know, my "naked" toes look UGLY here! I had just trimmed them and they were really dry, so they look kind of weird. But hey, they're feet! I have nothing to hide from ya'll! (there it is again, love that word!) In fact, I kinda love my toes because they are all the perfect size. You know, the big toe is the biggest, and then they go down in a row perfectly like little stair steps, just the right sizes for playing "this little piggy" haha.

ANYWAY - after trying out the samples, I figured that doing jamberry on ALL of my fingers and toes would be a huge improvement, right?? Right. So I ordered four sheets using the "buy three, get one free" special, plus I got the nail kit since I didn't have more than a couple of nail clippers kicking around the house. Seriously, I didn't! haha. Anyway, after placing my order, I waited anxiously for them to come! I also got a free sheet for wining one of the games at the party - go me! (jus' sayin'). AND - I must say here that I had a little hiccup and my main order got lost in their system or something, because after more than a week they weren't here. So I contacted Jenn who called them and got the order express shipped to me, AND got me another FREE sheet just for my hassle. Oh yeah, I really scored on this order. :)

Once the wraps arrived, for my first complete manicure I chose a really gorgeous design called "Timeless" seen here:

Timeless:
"Featuring a sepia tone, this wrap looks like it may have been preserved for generations." 

Unfortunately I did NOT get a picture of them on my fingers. ARG!! Oh well. I wasn't really planning to write a blog post about it, so I didn't think of it. But to make a long story short, I LOVED them so much!! And they stayed on for. . . wow, I'm not sure, somewhere between 2 to 3 weeks. . . I lost track of the time. It was amazing! And, they looked great the whole time!  Toward the end, a couple of them started to peel up at a few of the edges, and that's when I decided it was time to take them off.

So, last week I pulled them all off and they had grown out quite a bit from being under the protective wraps - how nice is that?!? Oh, let me give a little hint here, about removing them. I didn't do it the "official way" because I didn't have any nail polish remover on hand. So after they were removed, there was a little bit of gummy, sticky stuff on them. Luckily, I had some DoTerra Lemon essential oil with me, so I just took one drop and spread it across a couple of fingernails, then used my fingernails and a paper napkin to wipe them off completely. I was actually riding in the car when I did it and it was SO easy.

Anyway, I already mentioned that I'm a piano player so I like to keep them short by habit. So I ended up trimming them kind of short and decided to give them a few days "off" to grow a bit before applying the next set. Well a few days grew into a week or so. . .

And that is when disaster struck. 

Okay, I'll admit, that's a bit of a dramatic over-exaggeration. It wasn't exactly a disaster, but it was unfortunate. See, yesterday night when I got home from a family activity, I looked down at my left hand and realized that I had accidentally TORN OFF NEARLY THE ENTIRE TIP of my left middle fingernail - OUCH!! It was literally HANGING by the last little bit. And it was torn off very deep. UGH! You know how it is when there is NO white left? Yeah, that's how it was. I knew that if I cut off the rest it was going to hurt very badly for days. Unfortunately, I didn't get a good picture of it, but it looked something like this:

It was torn off like this, but about much further, nearly all the way off.

At first I figured it was a lost cause, and I was going to just clip it completely off. But it was very close to the nail bed, and I was afraid of it hurting or bleeding. Then it suddenly occurred to me - I got thinking about the fact that Jamberry is made from vinyl, and thought, "Hey, maybe it could act kind of like tape to hold the nail on until it grows a bit so it won't hurt when I have to clip it off!" So I decided it was time to do some new Jamberry wraps! I had wanted to anyway for the party... so here's what I did:

Click to order!

First I prepped the nail to try and get it to stay in place, so it wouldn't move around when I was trying to apply the Jamberry. I had some "liquid bandage" in the medicine cabinet, so I decided to try that first. I basically held the nail in place, and applied a couple coats of the liquid bandage to the nail along the crack.

It took about 3 thin coats, and a little patience, but I just held it carefully in place and waited for it to dry. Here's what it looked like after the glue was applied:

You can see how it was torn right along the white, from the left and nearly all the way across.

After it dried, it was still really fragile, so if I hadn't had Jamberry, I would have just had to forget it. (Although, today I found another great TIP for fixing a broken nail, so if you don't have jamberry on hand, you can try this other method!)

Next, I needed to choose a wrap. I had a couple to choose from, and decided on this really fun one that shows off one of my favorite hobbies:

Sheet Music:
"This simply clef-er design will have everyone singing, which could be treble."
(Hardy, har, har...)

You guessed it! MUSIC!! So, I started cutting my wraps, turned on a movie, and stayed up really late just applying my nails and watching a show and relaxing. Here's how the broken nail turned out:

It's the one in the middle - you can't even tell, huh?

And that's the rest of the story!! It's been nearly 24 hours now, and I am so excited that it's staying on great!! I can tell that the broken finger nail is definitely weaker than the other nails, so next time I'll probably use THIS METHOD before I put on the Jamberry. But considering that I was just improvising with what I had on hand, with no knowledge of how to fix a broken nail, I think it turned out great! Here's a picture of the full finished hand:

Jamberry to the Rescue!

Great fix, huh?!? I figure that even if it just keeps the nail on for a couple of days, it will be a bit longer, making it trimmable without being painful, but I have a feeling that it's going to stay on quite a bit longer than that. So far it doesn't seem like it's going to break off, though it may start bending a little as it grows out and the bond of the liquid bandage wears off. But I think we can call it a SUCCESS!

Time to put some Serenity in the diffuser
and enjoy a relaxing night's sleep! 

And here's one more pic just because. :)

Keep smiling!!
~JS~

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Update May 30, 2015:

After going through the whole process, I would recommend using super glue to make the broken nail stay in place before putting on the jamberry wraps. I used liquid bandage on mine, but it turned yellow and you could somewhat see it through the wrap. Also, it must have affected the adhesive bonding, because the wrap (only on that finger) started to come off after a few days. Wanting to let it grow longer before it broke all the way off, I redid the repair on that finger twice, once more with the liquid bandage, and the last time with super glue. Overall, I would say it worked out pretty well. Though it was a bit of a pain, it was better than having a bleeding fingernail! Putting on the Jamberry postponed the total breakage of the nail long enough that when the nail tip was annoying enough for me to finally cut it off, it was long enough that it didn't bleed. It's still pretty short, but not painful! ;)

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Update June 4, 2015:

Two and a half weeks after I posted this story, I was redeeming my hostess gifts, and my party had done so well (over $350 in sales!) that I decided to become what Jamberry calls a "hobbyist!" This means that I signed up for a consultant account, but will not necessarily be actively building a business. I did this with the intent to get a discount on my future purchases, AND - the part I'm most excited about - to design my OWN nail wraps using the Jamberry "Nail Art Studio!" This way I can occasionally sell to friends and family, on the side, as a hobby. :) Where this will go is not clear at this point, but I thought I should post this update to clarify for those of you who will see that now I *do* have a jamberry website at: jumbledsunshine.jamberrynails.net. Thank you! :D