OKay, so I forgot to bring a dress for the business conference portion of the Essence Festival. Shoot! I even forgot to register for the business conference, (but I did remember to register and pay VIP for the Beauty Carnival). I wore tons of metal, so when I got to the security area in the airport, homegirl TSA worker just had to feel me up. And yes, I refrained from calling her bad words, because I don't want to get into trouble with the TSA. But I was thinking them!! All of this, and more happened to me on the way to the Essence Festival, but trust me, I thought my nails were looking cute the entire time!

Now, I'm not going to give you the full how-to on how I achieved this style, mainly because I'm making a video with the entire step-by-step. I happen to be hoarse at this moment, so the video has to wait for a bit. However, on my blog, I've written the gist of what to do, and here I want to tell you how I got this style to last for two weeks!

So, let me start off with what not to do. Don't use cheap tips. I saw some short "coffin-shaped" tips on Amazon and bought them even though a few people said that they tips didn't last. I figured that they'd hold up with extra an extra layer of hard gel. I didn't think that these people probably used extra hard gel or acrylic and their nails still broke. Cheap tips will probably split on you. At least that's what happened to me. The tips stayed on, but they split right up the middle!

Be sure to roughen natural nails with a little filing on top. Do this very gently. You don't want to file your natural nail beds down so much that they crack. That's painful! So, if your nails are very thin, just swipe a finger nail file on them a couple of times to create a rough base. I read that a rough base helps the gel nails last longer.