“The Truth about Lash Glues” by Hanna Babanakava

There is such a huge variety of glue for lash artists! Most often we start with the cheapest option and then if our passion leads us to develop, we look for something of higher quality.

I have been following developments in the lash industry for about 5 years now, and I have witnessed glue evolution over the years. We started with really thick and slow ones, and now we have glues that are very stable even if clients use oil and wet their eyes right after extension.

Many modern glues are amazing, really. Manufacturers learn and create many good formulas, the only thing left for us to do is to pick one. But at the same time, so many misinforming ads appeared on the market that I cannot keep silent about it.

Today, I will shed light upon some very common, but very confusing things from the ads that make the glue appear magical, or which call a Golden Glue. I call it “Golden” because all these ads remind me of medieval alchemy, with people trying to create gold out of base materials… using magic!

And guess what? It didn’t work. Same as with this glue.

When advertisements promise you something, beware of what you read and don’t forget that science, not magic is what’s always behind our glue. If you know the science well and you see something that seems too good to be true – probably it is!

Glues drying under any temperature and humidity. I already made a post about them, but I just want to repeat my point: if it is a cyanoacrylate-based glue, its speed and good bonding depend on the humidity level in the room. The same glue can NEVER work at the same speed under low and high humidity.

Same goes for the glue drop. It cannot be well-preserved while on a jade stone in a hot room. The drop will start curing and curing pretty fast at that. Temperature hastens most chemical processes (remember, when dying hair, we increase the temperature for the color to get a hold quicker).

So, if someone promises you that a drop of their good glue will be ok for 1 or 2 hours, it is probably not going to happen in a hot and humid room. Just because chemistry doesn’t work this way. But it can happen if you work in a cool room at medium humidity

For example, I can use the drop for up to 2 hours as well, when the room is not hot, and the glue does not become thick. But if it is hot and humid, I need to refresh the drop of the same glue every 15-20 minutes not to spoil the client’s retention.

The glue may seem ok on the surface, but on the inside, it will never stay the same with the passage of time. So be careful.

Non-standard ingredients in the glues (or other liquid lash products) may be confusing as well. You can see the glue with contents listing water or oils or food pigments or even iron oxide.  Unless you already know why these ingredients have been used, you can always ask the manufacturer or the vendor what these are. Because some ingredients can make the glue more allergenic, especially if it contains any plant-based colorants, or make it not as suitable for sensitive eyes as it would have been otherwise.

For some reason, all water and oil resistance tests I have seen so far are done on uncured (i.e. liquid) glue. This is absolutely wrong since the properties of cyanoacrylate polymer (dried glue) are very different from the monomer liquid glue.

For example, simply saying, water acts as an activator on the liquid glue, while oil is a solvent. Also, experiments involving dilution or disappearance of pigment in liquid glue do not demonstrate any sort of resistance of the glue to oils, because their outcome depends entirely on the specific pigment and pigment alone.

We are currently working on videos with short and long term oil and water resistance tests.

We can conclude that many ads may indeed sound fabulous, and we would like to believe that everything can be made as amazing! That’s the reason cons have been so popular since forever.

Likewise, ads describing magical promises of their products can make us believe our life can become as nice and carefree as a good fairytale.

But you have to be realistic.

Take a look at the contents and draw your own conclusions on whether the claim in the ad is feasible or not. And if you are not so knowledgeable about glue ingredients and what effects they can have, I’m glad to welcome you at my online training called Cyanoacrylate Alchemy.

There you will find new information about how and why all these things work and how you can use their advantages to boost the quality of your lash sets.

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