Warning! Warning! Very Danger!

Last night I was preparing some false nails to wear today (I know, I said not to wear falsies, but my natural nails are actually as long as the falsies so it is unlikely anything will get caught under them and break them off. Also, my natural nail art is fancier than false nails. You will see what I mean when I make my coord post at the end of the month!) I cut and filed them until they were a good fit and set them out on my little table in order, just in case I did not wake up early today.

Then, for some reason, I decided to check out the nail glue I had gotten over the summer. I have never used nail glue before, so I wanted to make sure that I knew how!

Lesson #1: Always Practice Before the Event
Good thing I did, because I found that there was dried glue clogging the tip of my pen-style nail glue! So I took the top off (took a bit of work!) and looked inside. It turned out that there was a big chunk of glue dried up in the front of the pen! I looked in the back and realized that it looked empty All the glue had dried up, despite being brand new!

So I looked back at the front half, and felt something spill out of the back half in my right hand. There was still a bit of glue left!

Lesson #2: Nail Glue is Not Skin-Friendly
Despite being something one is supposed to apply to one's nails, there was a disclaimer on the pen saying to avoid contact with skin/cuticle/eyes/mouth/anything not made of nail. Well, now there is a mess of nail glue on my hand, leading to the table, and then dripping onto my pants. Pants glued to leg? DO NOT WANT! I quickly pulled the fabric of my pants away from my skin (hooray for stretchy fabric!)

Feeling as if this date was going to be more work than I had intentionally planned for, I noticed a strange smell...

Lesson #3: Nail Glue is Chemicals
Yes, there was a chemical-y smell. But there was also a sort of singeing, chemical-burn smell. I look at the glue-y table, then at my glue-y pants. My pants were smoking! This is an approximation of what my face looked like.

I have never heard of this happening before! But yes, there was some type of chemical reaction happening on my pants that resulted in the melting/burning smell, complete with smoke and heat! I quickly took my pants off, only to find that my middle finger on my right hand was now glued to my pants. This is so not funny.

Lesson #4: Invest in Nail Glue Remover
THANK GOODNESS I had thought to also invest in a little bottle of nail glue remover when I bought the nail glue! It took the entire bottle to release my finger from the mass of now-cooled, chemical-burning mess that used to be a nice pair of dance pants. Needless to say, they went in the trash. R.I.P., my wonderful pants!

Now that I was no longer in danger of burning up or melting, I had to get this dried glue off my leg and hand!

Lesson #5: Nail Polish Remover is Pretty Rad
I took a bath in nail polish remover. OK, that is a bit of an exaggeration, but I did wash my leg and hand in a quarter bottle of mild nail polish remover. Thanks for saving my life, Japanese brand Meko mild nail polish remover! (See what I did there? Things that serve me well get a plug! Not sure how available it is worldwide, though) In a previous episode of gluing mishaps, I got superglue on the dining table and on my hands (it's a deco story - I am sure you can imagine what happened haha!) and safely removed everything with this polish remover! Which, strangely enough, is really not that great and removing my regular nail polish...

Anyway, after much washing with remover and soap, I gave my poor, abused hands a generous slathering of lotion, apologized to them, and went to bed.

In the future, I will be sticking to one-day nail stickers for false nails. I wish I could tell you what brand of chemical weapon nail glue it was, but sadly everything was written in Korean. Except the warnings telling you not to touch the glue with anything you don't want permanently destroyed. They were kind enough to provide English translations of that.