Now that you decide to give soft gel tips a try, good for you and your nails. I assume that you already have some of the nail tools to do basic gel manicures. In this article, you will know all the items you need to buy so you can do soft gel nail tips at home.
What you need to buy for a basic soft gel kit will include:
- A fast-cure led nail lamp
- Soft gel tips, soft gel tip adhesive
- And a regular led nail lamp
You should have some experience doing gel manicures at home already and have had some experience doing press on nails. The soft gel tip application is very similar to applying press-on nails
because these soft gel tips are also full cover nail tip.
If you have not or are not confident about what you need to do, read this article, Gelish Soft Gel Tips: The Beginner’s Guide before you start buying.
Note: at the beginning of launching soft gel tips, Gelish introduced an all-in-one soft gel tip kit.
However, the quantity is limited. If you can get your hands on one of these, you save some money.
If these starter kits are no longer available, you have to buy them individually, and this article will help you what to buy so you can save some money.
Soft gel tip practice materials
If you have never done gel manicures or press-on nails before, I recommend you buy some press-on nail kits to practice so you do not have to use the expensive soft gel tips practicing. After you are comfortable putting them on your nails so that they look good on your hands, you are ready for soft gel tips.
Now let us go over what you might already have. If you have them, that is great. If you do not, you can purchase them.
Things you might already have to apply soft gel tips
For nail preparation:
- Hand sanitizer
- Alcohol and/or nail cleanser
- Polish remover or acetone
- 180-grit Nail files
- 100-grit Nail buffers
- A cuticle pusher or orange-wood stick
- Cuticle nippers
- Buffer
- Cotton and lint-free paper towels
- Nail dehydrator and pH balanced solution
- LED nail lamp
- Nail tip cutter or high-quality small pair of scissors
- Different shades of regular polish or gel polish
All of the above items you can buy at your local nail supply stores or on Amazon.
Again, if you already have all of the items listed above, great. If you need to buy some, then those items are not that expensive that you can buy on amazon to complete the nail preparation kit.
Things you need to buy to complete your soft gel nail kit
- Soft gel nail tips
- Soft gel tip primer
- Soft gel tip adhesive
- Touch LED nail lamp for flash-cure
I will explain what these are and divide them into two groups based on price next.
Gelish soft gel tips brand
Gelish is the company that invented the soft gel tip technology, so you can not go wrong with buying your products from this company, but they will come with higher prices. With this brand, you can be sure that everything you buy is high quality, and that they need no lengthy introduction or explanation.
- Gelish soft gel nail tips
- Gelish soft gel tip primer
- Gelish soft gel tip adhesive
- Touch LED nail lamp for flash-curing
Gelish soft gel nail tips explained:
Gelish soft gel nails tips come in a box that has 11 different sizes, each size has 50 tips. Similar to press-on-nails, they come in different shapes and lengths. Just pick the shape of the tips that you like the most and use it more often to buy first. Here is the list of all different Gelish soft gel nail tips that are available:
- Long stiletto
- Medium coffin
- Long coffin
- Medium round
- Long round
You can see all of these nail tips in the Gelish store on Amazon.
Gelish soft gel tip primer explained:
Primer application is a necessary step in any artificial nail enhancement, and the same thing holds for soft gel tips. After phBond, applying soft gel tip primer will further prepare the nail surface to ensure good bonds.
Gelish soft gel tip adhesive explained:
Similar to press-on nails that use nail glue to attach nail tips to the nail surface, soft gel tip adhesive is a specially formulated gel base coat used to attach the nail tips. This gel adhesive is stronger than regular nail glue and it keeps these soft gel tips stay on for up to 4 weeks.
Primer and tip adhesive can be bought together as a package, and it is called soft gel dual. You can also purchase them in the Gelish store on Amazon.
Touch LED nail lamp for flash-curing explained:
This is the most expensive item in the soft gel nail tip kit, the price is almost $100.00, and they only have a limited quantity, so if you like to own name-brands, purchase these as soon as you can before they run out.
The purpose of this nail lamp is to flash-cure the gel adhesive on one nail so you can go on the next one to finish putting all ten tips before curing them in a regular LED nail lamp for 60 seconds.
This touch LED nail lamp is necessary to do soft gel tips because you can not flash-cure nails in a regular LED nail lamp because it has a small space opening. They are available in Gelish store on Amazon.
The total cost of buying these Gelish soft gel tip items:
I make a list below so you can see the total figure as an example.
| Long stiletto soft gel nail tips | $17.99 |
| Soft gel dual (primer and gel adhesive) | $29.99 |
| Touch LED nail lamp | $99.99 |
| Total | $147.97 |
You can reduce the initial cost of doing soft gel nail tips even further if you buy them using a less expensive brand.
Note: until Gelish decides to make these items available to public, you can only buy Gelish soft gel tips and their accessories if you have a nail professional license and register with amazon. So now you have to make due with other brands of soft gel tips.
Soft gel tips on a budget for home use
Since you can not get your hands on Gelish soft gel tips because you are not a nail professional, you can get in on this new nail trend using gel tips from another brand.
If you are on a budget or just want to try them out and do not want to spend a lot of money, here is how much you will expect to pay.
Beetles brand has a soft gel nail kit that is very affordable. This kit has everything you need to do soft gel tips for under $20.00 at home yourself.
A Beetles soft gel nail tip kit has:
- 2 in 1 nail glue and base gel
- 500pcs nail tips
- And one mini portable flash-cure led lamp
With 500 nail tips and you only need to use 10 each time, this kit will give you 50 nail sets. If you were to do them every 3 weeks, the kit will last almost 3 years.
These kits are available on Amazon.
Conclusion:
Whichever your choice is, I think you will like soft gel tips because they are as durable as acrylic nails, easy to apply like press-on nails, and have a low initial investment. I have been doing artificial nail enhancement for more than 20 years as a nail salon owner/nail technician using various products. However, I think soft gel nail tips will become one of the favorite nail products for home use for their simple process, easy to master, and last much longer on natural nails than press-on nails.
Hope you will like them too.
Good luck, and have fun with your soft gel nail adventure.
