Broken nail and how to fix it.

I've had several breaks recently which is so frustrating but by far the worse, always seams to be on my thumbs. I've use this repair technique several time and honestly it works a treat!

 

As you can see this break was very low and hurt like hell when it happened. There was no way that I could cut this down to the break line, it's practically half way down my nail-bed!!

Gather all the thing you need, 

Tea bag - empty out the tea leafs, you just need the bag. Clear nail glue, Scissors, Tweezers, Nail files and a White buffing block. I've used my NSI 150 and 100 Dura files, my Models Own 4 way buffer and my white block (not shown)

Cut your empty tea bag into small squares or rectangles. They need to be big enough to cover the break and the nail around it. You can if you prefer use a piece that is the same size as the entire nail. it will add strength but does mean you'll notice the re-growth.

Add nail glue directly to the break and using your tweezers place your first square of teabag onto the wet glue. press the square down until it's soaked up all the glue. Add another layer of glue over top - make sure it's all covered. You want to seal it all in.

Once the glue is dry I used my 100 grit file, this is quite coarse so great for roughing out the lumps and bumps made by the nail glue. Then using my 150 grit I smoothed and buffed out the tea bag line making it disappear. After all the filing the nail looks something like the picture above, dusty! I finished of using my white block with is a nail buffer. There is a buffer on the Models Own 4 way but it's not as good as the real thing.  

 

You now need to remove all the dust, a damp cloth works well here. Once your nail is clean and dust free you need to add another tea bag and nail glue layer. once this has dried its time for another file and buffing season. It seams a little odd but your adding strength to the nail with the glue and the tea bag acts like a flexi membrane that's keeping all together.

 

 

After two weeks, the repair is still going strong. I've changed my nail colour every other day or so. I've not used any acetone as this would dissolve the glue and undo all your hard work.  As you can see the teabag is barely visible on the naked nail and the break it's slowly growing out. I've had to trim the nail down because I've lots of breaks on other fingers. At one point I think I had 6 nails that had the teabag treatment.