Broken Nail Disaster and Repair Job

  Last night I noticed the worst thing ever to a nail-biter attempting to reform - a big old break in on of my nails!  It was very far back as well, over the nail bed so that it was rather painful.

Broken nail!

After cleaning

  In the past, this would have led me to probably biting off all ten of my nails (sad, I know), but this time I bandaged the nail for the evening, ran off to Sally Beauty this morning and got some items for nail repair.  Overall I am very pleased with the outcome!

The products I used

Wrap + glue (light corrected)

 With some help from the fabulous people at Sally, I picked out some Supernail Swiss Silk wraps, as well as 5 Second Brush-On Nail Glue.  I first cleaned off the nail and made sure it was dirt and oil free, then I cut off a small strip of the silk wrap and applied it to the break.  I took pictures of the process, but unfortunately I had my flash on for some and they were way to bright - I tried to correct them on the computer but only one was salvageable, so I do not have an image of the silk itself.  After the silk, I added two layers of the nail glue to the nail.  After waiting for the glue to dry, which took several minutes, I buffed down the glue and silk as much as possible to smooth them out over the nail surface.  I did not do too much buffing, however, because I did not want to weaken the area since I know it is going to take me a long time to grow this out to the point where I want to trim past the break!

  After buffing down, I added a coat of NailTek I - Maintenance, my normal base coat, then started my normal painting process.  You can see below what the nail looks like with just base coat, as well as with one coat of polish.  With just the one coat you can clearly see the elevated area with the silk.

With base coat

One coat of (messy) polish

I applied another coat of polish (for two coats total), Konad, and two coats of Seche Vite fast dry top coat.  The final results are below.

Fixed up nail (with smeared Konad again, I was in too much of a hurry!)

The final result, all nails together!

  The nail feels very strong now, and I am hopefully that I can keep it together while it grows out, even if I have to repeat this procedure once more.  If you look closely, you can see the raised area where the silk is, but overall it is pretty difficult to see it, and I don't think you would see it if you weren't looking for it.

  What do you all think?  Is this the best way to repair a broken nail, or do you have a better way?  I am definitely open to suggestions - this is just what I found online, as well as what the ladies at Sally Beauty suggested.  I would love to here your thoughts and opinions!

  I am off to the game now with my fixed up Game Day Nails.  Tomorrow, I am going to try water marbling.  I am really excited!  :)