Cuticle Remover: Does it really work?

October 24, 2016

Cuticle Remover: Does it really work?

If you’ve read my post on my weekly at-home mani routine, then you’d know I am a total manicure junkie. I love taking care of my nails at home and keeping them in the best shape possible. My entire routine from beginning to the end of painting probably takes an entire hour, if not a little more. So naturally, I’ve always been curious about cuticle remover but have never actually tried it before. There’s many out there on the market, but with Sally Hansen being such a popular and well-loved nail brand I figured that’s where I should start. I’ve had it close to a month now and really put it to the test. I’m finally ready to answer the burning question I’ve always had, and I’m sure many of you are wondering - does it really work??

I bought this for around $5 at Walmart and it comes with 1 fl oz. of product. It’s a gel formula and some of the recognizable ingredients include aloe, chamomile, and green tea. The instructions say to apply a thin layer around the cuticles and leave it for 15 seconds before pushing back the cuticles with a manicure stick. It can also be used on calluses and left on for one minute before wiping off. I’m not exactly sure why, but I did notice that it mentions several times on the packaging to not leave it on longer than one minute and to wash with warm soapy water afterwards.

In the picture below, you can see what my cuticles look like before applying the gel. I have only cut my nails, but haven’t done anything else in my routine yet. Although I do like to keep my nails well manicured, I have gone two weeks without using the gel in hopes to be able to show you more of a difference. You can see there are a few dry areas and the cuticles have grown over on my nail beds just slightly.

In the after picture below, you can see there are still a few dry areas on my skin around the nails that need to be cut with my other clippers but the cuticles that have grown over onto my nail beds are all gone. It is something that you have to work with a little bit, but it does do the job. It doesn’t feel like anything while it’s sitting on my cuticles, it just feels cooling like aloe typically does. I also don’t have any sensitivity to this product and my nails feel fine after washing them.

I haven’t looked into the specifics of what cuticle removers are expected to do, I just went into it thinking it would loosen the dead skin and would be easy to wipe away. It takes more work than what I thought and I still have to go in with other clippers to trim the dead skin around my nails, so this isn’t something I would add into my weekly routine. I think this would work better if you have more cuticles overgrowing on to the nail beds than what I had to show.

So while it does work, I think there are better solutions out there. For example, I typically just use the side of my cuticle clippers to remove excess cuticle on the nail beds and I think that works better (and faster) than this gel. It was interesting to try, but I don’t think I’ll be repurchasing any others once I finish this bottle.

~Mani Monday~

Taking a little break from the darker colors for a little bit, I decided to go with one of my favorites this week. I’m wearing the Sinful Colors polish in Supernova. I’ve always loved this specific color, but as I started painting it I realized it looks a lot like the chrome finish that’s really popular right now. I’ve been wanting to get my hands on some, but don’t want to deal with a UV light or gel so this is definitely a great alternative. It’s not an identical match by any means, but it looks very similar and I’m loving it!